This past Monday, I gave my first oral presentation (my first assignment!) of my doctoral career at UCLA. For our class on “Jews, Gentiles, and Christians in the Roman World,” taught by Ra’anan Boustan, we first covered the historiography of how Christian writers have treated Judaism throughout the millennia. The major works that I presented on were George Foot Moore’s “Christian Writers on Judaism” (from Harvard Theological Review in 1921), a chapter out of E.P. Sanders Paul and Palestinian Judaism (“Tannaitic Literature,” pp. 33–59) and a hefty excerpt from Charlotte Klein’s Anti-Judaism in Christian Theology (pp. 1-66). Making my way through all that history of scholarship and planning a presentation on it was a beastly task. But the results were interesting, so I’d like to share it here with you all.

Part of the reason that this reading was so overwhelming, besides the overabundance of name after name, is because it was so negative. We read about one guy after another (yes, all men) who poorly interpreted Judaism. Moore begins his article with this statement: “Christian interest in Jewish literature has always been apologetic or polemic rather than historical.” That sets the tone for the whole reading. (To make a simplistic clarification, “apologetic” is defending that Christianity is true, while “polemic” is closer to a hateful attack on Judaism).

Moore first covers Christian writings on Judaism through the eighteenth century. In the early centuries of this period, Christian writers set up caricatures of Jewish apologists as straw-men that could easily be knocked down. After a few centuries, Jews and Christians both stepped up their game. Jewish authors challenged Christianity on the basis of Christian documents and doctrines. Christian authors used authoritative Jewish writings, such as the Targums and Midrash (going beyond merely the OT), to show that true Judaism actually verified the claims of Christianity. During this period, most Christian writers were polemical, though there were some exceptions that were merely apologetic.

In the nineteenth century, Christian scholars made an attempt to depict Judaism from an objective historical angle, though Moore believes they were unsuccessful. Judaism was viewed primarily through the lens of the New Testament. Judaism was addressed as the “background” of the New Testament. Many scholars worked on collecting parallels found in Jewish writings to the New Testament.

Ferdinand Weber stands out as one who represents another trend in Christian writing on Judaism. Weber sought to develop a systematic theology of Judaism, using the systems of Christian theology to depict historical Judaism. Within Weber and other authors of that time, we see a shift in thinking about Judaism. Now, the theology of Judaism is thought to be radically different (and inferior) from that of Christianity. The God of Judaism is far removed from humanity and inaccessible. Weber describes the “soteriology” of Judaism (a Christian term referring to the theology of salvation) as wholly legalistic. At the judgment, the Jew will stand before God with their transgressions on one side of the scale and their good works and acts of atonement on the other. Their works are what make them righteous, but their eternal salvation is uncertain according to Weber. If they do happen to lean on the righteous side, this leads to self-righteous pride in the faithful Jew.

Sanders and Klein pick up where Moore leaves off, showing that Moore made some headway in the study of Judaism, but ultimately his rallying cry for fair scholarship on Judaism was nullified. Klein notes that scholarship that perpetuates old biases is not malicious, hateful, or anti-Semitic (contrary to Nazi “pseudo-scholars”, like Kittel), but rather they show an ignorance of the sources and of their own bias. Sanders highlights the work of Billerbeck and Bultmann as nullifying the work of Moore. Billerbeck with his widely used parallels between rabbinic literature and the NT and Bultmann who added his supreme weight in NT studies to the Weber line of thinking about Judaism.

One of the key problems seen in this quick history of scholarship is that assumptions can become so deeply rooted as to go unquestioned and unsupported within scholarship. Even well-meaning and careful scholars fall prey to inherited harmful presuppositions.

Bias is a legacy that lasts generations in complicated and hidden ways. So, what do we do with our presuppositions? How do we approach historical documents? What sources do we use to talk about “normative Judaism”? Is there such a thing as normative Judaism?

These are all difficult questions, no doubt. And the track record of scholarship does not give us a heck of a lot of hope (though things have certainly gotten better since Sanders and Klein wrote in the seventies). But personally, I feel like we can make great progress by trying to be self-aware of our biases (what do we want the texts to say) and trying to be as honest as possible. I also think we can help things if we can just be a bit more sensitive to concerns that have been raised by others. For example, though this issue isn’t mentioned above, if you are going to use the term “conversion” for what happened to Paul, you should probably explain why and acknowledge the concerns raised by folks who think that’s an anachronistic or otherwise inappropriate term for Paul. I don’t think sensitive and self-aware scholarship is an impossibility!