The Very Different Ways That Jews and Christians Interpret the Hebrew Bible

We all know that Jews and Christians both believe that the collection of writings known as the Hebrew Bible are Divinely inspired and authoritative. Even so, in an article for Time back in 2019, John Barton pointed out that "the interpretative keys that each community brings to the texts are so different that it is almost as though they recognized two different Bibles." (See Why Judaism and Christianity Interpret the Bible Differently)

He went on to underscore the fact that Christians view those Hebrew writings as the first part of a two-part narrative - that they constitute what they refer to as the OLD Testament. Barton observed that, for Christians, this "story is about a disaster and a planned rescue mission, Paradise lost and Paradise regained. It tells of the loss of innocence in the Garden of Eden, a consequent history of human disobedience throughout the stories related in the narrative books, and a promise of coming redemption and salvation in the books of the prophets, leading naturally into the New Testament, where we learn how God’s planned rescue of the human race came to effect in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ."

However, Barton also noted that Jews see that same set of writings "as being about God, people and land. The story of Adam and Eve is a minor theme. Much more central is God’s call of Abraham to be the father of a great nation, and a blessing to the whole world through his obedient following of God’s way. There is no grand narrative in the Hebrew Bible, certainly not one that would culminate in the coming of Jesus, but more a collection of individual stories, sayings and teachings that together constitute a tissue of instructions on how to live a good life as a Jew."

How can Christians then have the audacity to offer a different perspective on writings which so clearly belong to another faith? How can Christians make these writings mean things which the original authors never intended for them to mean? What is the origin of this very different perspective on the Hebrew Scriptures?

Of course, we must all remind ourselves that Jesus and his original disciples were all Jewish. Jesus, Peter, James, John, and Paul were all observant Jews! They all accepted the God of the Hebrews as THE GOD of the universe and believed that the writings which the Jews had accumulated over the course of their long history as a people represented God's narrative. Jesus accepted the Torah as the standard which he would have to meet to accomplish his mission (the salvation of humankind). Indeed, he saw himself as the fulfillment of those Scriptures!

As a consequence, it was completely natural for his followers to begin to see him everywhere in those writings. And, of course, this is reflected in the writings of those early disciples of Christ - the collection of writings that the Christian Church now recognizes as the NEW Testament! The gospels, Acts, Paul's epistles, Hebrews, and Revelation all offer an unabashed, Christ-centric perspective on the Hebrew Scriptures. Moreover, just as one would expect, there is a great deal of both internal and external evidence that this very different perspective on the Hebrew Scriptures was highly offensive to the majority of the Jews of that day (and that the modern face of Judaism continues to reject this other perspective).

Simply put, this is a matter of faith. Judaism has one perspective and Christianity has another! It all boils down to whether or not one accepts that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ - the Messiah! In other words, this is a foundational or elemental tenet of the religion you profess. Which view has more merit? Which view is more grounded in the actual text? The answers to those questions are very subjective, and they obviously depend on the faith of the person answering them!

From a more neutral and objective position, we would have to say that one perspective is not superior to the other. In the article cited above, Barton observed that: "the relation of the Bible to its faiths is elliptical, not direct: 'Scripture alone' does not work for either Christianity or Judaism as an explanation of what is actually believed or done. Nevertheless, both faiths find it hard to believe that the Bible does not in some way have a point-by-point correspondence with their religion." He went on to note that: "The Hebrew Bible consists of a collection of the highly variegated national literature of ancient Israel, written and compiled, probably, between the eighth and second centuries BCE. There is no way that such a collection could be identical with Judaism as a worldwide religion that has flourished and developed throughout subsequent centuries, and is still developing today. The New Testament is a first- and second-century CE compendium of writings from an originally Jewish, but later predominantly Gentile, sect in the eastern Mediterranean—one that evolved into one of the most successful faiths in the world." In other words, the human authors of the documents which both faiths hold to be sacred would be bewildered by some of the interpretations of the folks who revere their writings in the present day!

This, however, should NOT be regarded by the adherents of either faith as disqualifying - as a justification for dismissing or ignoring those writings. In scholarly circles all around the world, literature and philosophy are interpreted and reinterpreted on a continuous basis. And anyone who has ever engaged in communication of any kind (verbal, nonverbal, written, etc.) knows that the message received is very often different from the one that the original sender intended. Moreover, it is very often the case that this turns out to be a very positive development for both the sender and the receiver! Humans are social creatures. We are interactive. We nurture each other - evoke things from each other - interpret each other. It is, as they say, what we do!