Since the New Testament was primarily written by Jews (all but probably Luke were Jewish) who would have been used to communicating in Aramaic or Hebrew, since the message of the New Testament centers on the life, death and resurrection of the Jewish Messiah, since much of the New Testament describes events that took place in the land of Israel and since the contents of the New Testament can only be understood fully in light of the Hebrew Scriptures, it is only natural that there are numerous, richly attested aspects of the Jewish background to the New Testament. Here are some examples.
Historical and religious background to specific verses. Most believers are familiar with the Lord’s words in John 7:37–38: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” John 7:37 provides the background: “On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice.” But what is the significance of this? The Torah laws mention nothing that would explain why Jesus spoke these words on this particular day, but first-century Jewish traditions provide the background:
7:37 The “last day” of the Feast of Tabernacles (7:2) probably refers to the eighth day. For at least the first seven days of the feast, priests marched in procession from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple and poured out water at the base of the altar. Pilgrims to the feast watched this ritual, which Jews throughout the Roman world thus knew; it was even commemorated on souvenir jars they could take home with them.
7:38 The public reading of Scripture at this feast included the one passage in the Prophets that emphasized this feast, Zechariah 14, which was interpreted in conjunction with Ezekiel 47. Together these texts taught that rivers of living water would flow forth from the Temple (in Jewish teaching, at the very center of the earth, from the foundation stone of the Temple), bringing life to all the earth. The water-drawing ceremony (7:37) (originally meant to secure rain) pointed toward this hope.
7:39 Most of Judaism did not believe that the Spirit was prophetically active in their own time but expected the full outpouring of the Spirit in the Messianic age or the world to come. Water usually symbolized Torah (law) or wisdom in Jewish texts, but John follows Old Testament precedent in using it for the Spirit (see Isaiah 44:3; Ezekiel 36:24–27; Joel 2:28).[202]
Now look at Yeshua’s words again. What an extraordinary statement He was making!
Names, words and terms. When you hear the words “Jesus Christ, son of Mary,” you naturally think of something very “Christian” (and probably even Gentile). But when you hear the words “Yeshua the Messiah, son of Miriam,” something very different comes to mind, something quite Jewish. But Jesus was Jewish, not Christian (see #36), and His mother’s name was Miriam, not Mary. As simple as this is, just referring to Jesus as Yeshua—even on occasion—and referring to His mother as Miriam immediately serves to remind us that our Savior and His family were all Jews.
In my book Revolution in the Church, I included a Jewish roots chapter entitled “Have You Read the Epistle of Jacob Lately?” You might ask, “Which epistle is that? Is that one of those ancient documents that was discovered recently, like the gospel of Judas?” Not at all. As I explain:
Let’s look at the opening verse of this epistle as rendered in a traditional English version: “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: Greetings” (James 1:1, NIV). You might take this as saying, “This is the Christian leader James writing to Christians scattered around the world, figuratively referred to as the twelve tribes.”
But what if we rendered the Greek literally, also rendering other names in a way that reflects their Hebrew/Aramaic background? It would sound like this: “Jacob, a servant of God and of the Lord Yeshua Messiah, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: Shalom.” Now what comes to mind? You respond, “This is a letter from a Jewish believer in the Messiah to Jewish believers scattered around the world.” Correct! And notice that one key word: Jewish. The New Testament is a Jewish book![203]
Yes, James in the original Greek is actually Jacob, as reflected in almost every translation into every other language.[204] Only in English is it James, a later form that came about when the Latin Iacobus, the equivalent of Greek Iakobus, was corrupted into Iacomus, which then made its way into English as James. Shall we turn, then, to the Letter of Jacob? What a difference a name can make!
Just think: Saying Abraham, Isaac and James almost sounds like mixing Judaism and Christianity; saying Abraham, Isaac and Jacob makes a world of difference. Well, two of Yeshua’s disciples were named Jacob, and one of His blood brothers, the author of this letter, was also named Jacob.
How about turning now to the Letter of Judah (better known as Jude)? In this case, it is not a matter of a corrupt linguistic form, as in James rather than Jacob. It is simply remembering that the man called Jude in English would have been known to his colleagues as Judah. The Letters of Jacob and Judah. It is sounding like an entirely different Bible—a very Jewish one! Certainly, that was the world in which Yeshua and His disciples lived:
These are the names of the twelve emissaries:
First, Shim‘on, called Kefa, and Andrew his brother,
Ya‘akov Ben-Zavdai and Yochanan his brother,
Philip and Bar-Talmai,
T’oma and Mattityahu the tax-collector,
Ya‘akov Bar-Halfai and Taddai,
Shim‘on the Zealot, and Y’hudah from K’riot, who betrayed him.
Matthew 10:2–4, jnt
Yes, the disciples, too, were Jews, not Christians, and when they came to be called “Christians” (see Acts 11:26) it simply meant those who followed this Christos figure, a name with little meaning to the Greek-speaking world. (It would be like calling Billy Graham’s followers “Grahamites,” and in a derogatory way at that; see 1 Peter 4:12–16.)
Now let us take a look at a specific verse in Jacob, namely, Jacob 2:2, where the Greek word synagogēs is used:
The Greek word synagoges, meaning “assembly, meeting place, synagogue,” occurs 56 times in the Greek New Testament, being found most frequently in the Gospels and Acts (53 times). Obviously, when you hear the word “synagogue,” you think, “Jewish.”
In the Gospels, Jesus frequently attended the local synagogues, where He generally found Himself in conflict with the Jewish leadership. This, of course, makes sense to us, since Jesus had not yet died on the cross and founded “Christianity,” so it was OK for him to attend synagogue, right? In Acts, Paul, a converted Jew (correct?), went into the synagogues to preach Christianity to the unconverted Jews, which also makes sense, since he wanted to reach his own people with the good news about the Messiah. And how is synagoges translated each of these 53 times in the Gospels and Acts? Synagogue, of course.
The word also occurs twice in the book of Revelation, namely, in Revelation 2:9 and 3:9, speaking of those who claim to be Jews and are not, but are a synagoges of Satan. And once more, translators render the word with “synagogue”—this time, a Jewish synagogue of Satan (quite naturally, since the context is negative!). So, 55 out of 56 times, synagoges is translated “synagogue,” indicating that there’s not much dispute about the meaning of the word.
There’s just one time in our English Bibles that synagoges is not translated “synagogue”—James 2:2! “Suppose a man comes into your meeting . . .” (niv). Or, in the King James Version, “For if there come unto your assembly. . . .” What a revelation! Since this is a “Christian” context rather than a “Jewish” context, synagoges cannot possibly mean “synagogue.” Rather, it has to mean “meeting” or “assembly,” since Christians don’t meet in synagogues. This, of course, is confirmed by 5:14, where those who are sick are enjoined to call for “the elders of the church.”
There’s only one problem with this line of reasoning: This is the epistle of Jacob, not James, and it was written to Jewish Christians, not Gentile Christians. That’s why David Stern in his Jewish New Testament rightly renders this, “Suppose a man comes into your synagogue . . . ,” while Kenneth Wuest’s Expanded Translation reads, “For if there comes into your synagogue [the meeting place of Christian-Jews]. . . .” As New Testament scholar Craig Keener commented, the word translated “ ‘Assembly’ (kjv, nasb, nrsv) or ‘meeting’ (niv, gnb) is literally ‘synagogue,’ either because James wants the whole Jewish community to embrace his example, or because the Jewish-Christian congregations (cf. 5:14) also considered themselves messianic synagogues.” It is the latter explanation that is most likely.
How novel this sounds to most Christian ears: a Jewish epistle written to Jewish believers who met in Messianic synagogues! But that is clearly what the text indicates, although it is not the way most Christian teachers have interpreted the text.[205]
Hebrew or Aramaic Usage. Although I have emphasized that God preserved the New Testament for us in Greek rather than in Hebrew or Aramaic (see #40 and #41), we know that Jesus taught in Aramaic or Hebrew, and therefore we should expect Hebrew or Aramaic concepts or expressions to underlie the Greek text at many points. A frequently cited example of this is found in Matthew 6:22–23, which the niv translates:
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
This is rendered quite differently in David Stern’s Jewish New Testament:
“The eye is the lamp of the body.” So if you have a “good eye” [that is, if you are generous] your whole body will be full of light; but if you have an “evil eye” [if you are stingy] your whole body will be full of darkness. If, then, the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
What is the basis for Stern’s bracketed comments? Matthew commentator Donald Hagner explains:
These difficult verses can only be understood correctly by noting the context in which they stand, i.e., the pericopes [sections] on either side, both of which refer to concern with wealth. The haplous eye and the ponēros eye are not to be understood physically as a healthy and a diseased eye. . . . The eye is referred to metaphorically in this passage. The ponēros eye is the “evil eye” of Near Eastern cultures—an eye that enviously covets what belongs to another, a greedy or avaricious eye. . . . For the Jewish use of the expression in this sense, see m. ’Abot 2:12, 15; 5:16, 22. . . . Other references to an evil eye in this sense are found in Matthew 20:15 and Mark 7:22 (cf. Sir 14:8–10; Tob 4:7). The haplous eye, given the symmetrical structure of the passage, is probably the opposite of the evil eye, namely, a generous eye, as in the cognate adverb haplōs, “generously,” in Jas 1:5 (cf. Rom 12:8; 2 Cor 8:2; 9:11, 13)—an eye that is not attached to wealth but is ready to part with it.[206]
To be sure, Hagner notes that not all scholars agree with this, based on other Greek evidence, and, as I pointed out in a previous article, the question of “ ‘single/sound/good eye’ = ‘generous’ and ‘not sound/evil eye’ = ‘stingy’ (see Matthew 6:22–23) . . . has been the subject of lively discussion for decades, and it can be readily adduced from Septuagintal usage (cf. Proverbs 22:9) or even from the Greek New Testament itself (cf. Romans 12:8; 2 Corinthians 8:2; 9:11, 13; James 1:5; and Matthew 20:15) without any recourse to rabbinic literature.” In other words, just reading the Septuagint and New Testament carefully, the same conclusions could be reached about the Greek words in Matthew 6:23 meaning “generous” and “stingy” rather than “good” and “bad.” However, recognizing the Jewish usage of “evil eye” = “stingy” helps to confirm this interpretation, which makes excellent sense in the context of Matthew 6.
These, then, are just a few examples of the Jewish background of the New Testament. For many more examples, see David Stern’s Jewish New Testament Commentary, although not all scholars would accept all of Stern’s interpretations; see also Samuel Tobias Lachs, A Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (Lachs is not a believer in Jesus); more broadly, see Craig Keener’s The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Other, more specific studies are listed in the bibliographical supplement to my study Our Hands Are Stained with Blood.