Join the book study! Also, let’s read the gospels through the Rabbinic writings

In the previous days drafting this post, Hamas attacked the innocent citizens of Israel and Israel has declared war against Hamas. As of 11:45 am EST Sunday, October 8, the death toll has reached 900, with thousands wounded. Innocent people in both Israel and the Palestinian territories will suffer unimaginable pain and loss of life. Many of you may know that I am living with brain cancer, and I make frequent trips to Washington D.C. to advocate for medical research funding, but you may not know that my first trip to D.C. several years ago for advocacy was to advocate for Israeli-Palestinian peace, through the organization J Street. I am heartbroken by the continued terror and atrocity in Israel-Palestine. I stand with the innocent throughout the conflict, and I stand with the people Israel who have an internationally recognized right to self defense.

Introduction: Sunday Posts and jPK Reads Books

Today we read the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. This parable is right in our sweet spot, given its harsh judgment of the Jewish authorities. These are the sorts of texts that, on the face, challenge the very premise of this newsletter: If Jesus is read in context set within typical Jewish discourse, as I work toward here, then what gives?, with this obvious anti-Judaic rhetoric and, what appears to be, a clear judgment of the wicked tenants (the Pharisees?) and the killing of the vineyard owner’s (God?) son (Jesus?). And if that is the clear reading, isn’t this a straightforward admonishment of Temple Judaism, or of the religious authorities, or something? To quote a recent commenter who offered a proof text in opposition to a video that I posted to social media concerning a passage in Genesis, “I’d like to see you interpret your way out this one!” But first! Let’s talk books.

Book Study Details: jPK Reads Books

Thanks to those who expressed interest in the asynchronous book study with Paula Fredriksen’s text, When Christians Were Jews. I’ve heard from a couple of you that you’ve ordered the book, it arrived on your doorstep, and you’re eager for the book study! I’m excited for us to get going. Here is the plan!

Why Not Automatically Push Book Posts to Everyone?

I’ve debated whether to push all book study details to the entire email list, but I am also sensitive that the weekly Sunday Post may be all that some of you are interested to receive. When we do book studies, we have more touch points as we read together, including weekly summaries, video content, and open chat threads. My concern is twofold: First, these studies benefit from engaged readers, and I worry that if I push more frequent posts to the entire subscriber list, not only do we risk poor engagement from those who are not interested in guided, self-paced reading, the opposite may be true: We may experience an overall dis-engagement from everyone!

I want everyone here, and I want you to enjoy the experience of being a jPK reader, and that includes respecting your level of desired engagement. I would much rather see 75% of you read the weekly post, with only 25% subscribing to the book study than experience an overall drop in engagement across the board because subscribers began seeing way more posts than you expected. I respect your time, your inbox, and your preferences for seeing this content.

Second, and I’ll be candid here, it takes a lot of work to guide readers through the study. Each week I post a ten minute video (here is a playlist from a past study) to set the themes for the week, we engage in a chat prompt discussion each Wednesday, and I close out the week with a Friday post of key insights from the discussion. There’s the old “If you build it they will come,” model of engagement, but realistically, you gotta sorta want to go before you even seek out the field of dreams. Anyone who has facilitated a team meeting, coached little league, or taught a class knows that when you’re in the position of leadership, it’s pretty disheartening to speak to a room full of people who don’t want to be there!

People vote with their feet, and if we don’t have broad interest (whatever that means?) in a book study, then I should adjust to that tacit feedback and meet readers where they are. In short, I want you to help us move a study forward rather than me pushing out content that isn’t desired. I hope my candor is well received!

How Do You Sign Up for the Study?

OK! So for those who are on board—and I’m totally excited to get rolling! Here are the next steps! I’ve created an additional “Section” (what Substack calls it) of the newsletter called “jPK Reads Books.” By subscribing to that section, you’ll receive all the book study posts! And helpfully, if you’re only here for the general posts, you don’t need to take any action and things will continue to run as they have been, with no additional content coming your way.

It takes a couple extra steps to subscribe to the Section. Substack offers a useful guide for subscribing to the additional Section (jPK Reads Books). Follow the link below for a guided walk through to manage your subscription settings and subscribe to the additional Section.

➡️ Instructions for subscribing to our new section ⬅️

The first official post of the book study will publish on Monday, October 16. Ths timeline (a little more than a week from today) gives interested readers the time to subscribe to the new section and order the book (Options: Yale University Press or Amazon).

I look forward to reading with you!! And listen, I’m not above a shameless plug, if you appreciate opportunities like this one, this is a reader supported effort, so if you aren’t a paying subscriber at only $6/month, I always appreciate the extra love!

“I’d Like to See You Interpret Your Way Out of This One”

I’ve worked hard to position Jesus (well, the gospel writers’ depiction of Jesus) to be somewhat framed by normal Jewish discourse of the first century, availing themselves of the tradition of the Scriptures of Israel and sharing the theology of Jewish apocalyptic literature. The harsh discourse of the parable of the vineyard (also called the parable of the wicked tenants) may undermine my claims because it reads like a clear-cut case of Jesus directly judging the Pharisees. This also reminds me of interpretations of Paul, where Paul’s rhetoric reads as so blatantly anti-Law (Torah).

Christian interpretation for a long, long time has positioned Jesus as the Son of God, the messiah who comes to overturn Temple Judaism, including correcting the “ignorant,” “hypocritical,” and “legalistic” religious authorities. The Jewish-Christian discourse that I am engaged in makes clear this interpretive tradition. My nuanced interpretation is often met with the brute force of prooftexts that seem to so clearly dismiss my claims for a Torah observant Jesus in context.

Hear me, I am not intending to invite sympathy for the blowback to my online discourse. Rather, I am reporting the lived experience from someone, me, who has chosen to be a public commenter on biblical and religious studies. I am offering my descriptive account of what it’s like to be in dialogue with the online community of people who are interested enough to make content about Jewish-Christian topics. The interest in this somewhat niche category of online rhetoric naturally self-selects for those who are passionate enough to make public-facing content, and so, I note that biased sample of creators (like me) who are passionate enough to be public!

My claim is not necessarily that Jesus does not critique the religious authorities—neither that Paul in his epistles, for example, is not critiquing Judaism. Rather, the claim is that this critique draws from many existing political and theological notions, and the critique itself is better understood as inner-Jewish discourse. Jesus’ disagreements with Pharisees, if such disagreement in fact occurred during Jesus’ lifetime, is best understood as debates about Torah and sectarian debates that were commonplace among Jewish political movements. For example, the Essenes disagreed vehemently with the other sects:

A third faction, the Essenes, emerged out of disgust with the other two [Pharisees and Sadducees]. This sect believed the others had corrupted the city and the Temple.

What’s interesting is that John the Baptist, an apocalyptic preacher not unlike Jesus, and maybe Jesus’ friend and mentor, was possibly associated with the Essenes, and so anti-Pharisaic rhetoric would have come naturally to John (and Jesus).

And so, my effort, pace the commenter who challenged me to “interpret my way out of this one” when presented with a proof text to undermine my position, is not to make the text so malleable that I’m avoiding a natural reading by appeal to fancy interpretive technique—that I’m failing to “carve nature at its joints.” Rather, I wish to show the very history itself, the context and setting, is one that affirms inner-Jewish complaints against other sects. These complaints are amplified in the time of the gospel composition because post-70 CE, the Pharisees are the only major sect to survive the destruction of the Temple. The extant inner-Jewish critique makes its way into the gospel accounts.

Finally, to situate the parable of the vineyard. Consider this very similar parable but not from Jesus or the gospels, the following is from the rabbinic writings (a tractate from Talmud, Bava Metzia):

Rava bar Chama taught: It is like a king who had a vineyard and leased it to tenant farmers. When the time for the rent came, he sent his son to collect it from them. They said to him: “This is the heir; let us seize the inheritance from him.” They seized him and killed him. He sent his servants; they did to them the same as they had done to his son. He sent all of his servants; they did to them the same as they had done to his son. The king said: “I have no one else but myself.” He went down to collect it from them; they said to him: “This is the king; let us seize and kill him.” They seized and killed him. The king took back his vineyard and kept it for himself.

Yes, the gospel writers tell a parable to criticize the Pharisees, but what is important to know for our purposes is that this inner-Jewish critique was already present prior to the gospel formation and the appeal to the parable of the vineyard matches a parable already known to the rabbis.

This is why we study, friends. To offer an authentic interpretation of Christian texts, with Jewish context. That’s the tagline! Thanks for reading!