The harmful belief that Christianity ‘replaced’ Judaism is partly rooted in the erroneous view that Jesus told his followers that rules regarding ritual purity were outdated. (Wikimedia image)
Analysis - Jesus the faithful Jew: How misreadings of the Christian Gospels miss this and fuel anti-Judaism
Associate professor, Matthew Thiessen, was featured in The Conversation.
Apr 14, 2022
This year, Easter and Passover, holidays central to Christianity and Judaism, respectively, begin on the same weekend.
This timing provides an ideal opportunity to address faulty and often dangerous misconceptions that have been part of Christian communities for nearly 2,000 years.
Many Christians of varying denominations regard their faith as having developed from Jesus’s rejection of Judaism. But Jesus was a faithful Jew who respected and protected Jewish traditions, practices and laws.
The belief that Christianity replaced or supplanted Judaism is known as Christian supersessionism.
Historically, Christian anti-Jewish sentiment often became especially pronounced when Christians observed Holy Week, the week commemorating the time leading up to Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection.
From as early as the second century to today, some Christian readers of the New Testament Gospels have concluded that these depict Jesus doing away with Jewish law or replacing Judaism. This interpretation often includes the view that Jesus told his audiences that rules regarding ritual purity were irrelevant and outdated. But these views are simply incorrect.
Ancient Jewish law focused on three sources of ritual impurity: corpses; male and female genital discharges; and skin conditions known in Hebrew as tzaraʿat, translated into Greek as lepra. English translations of the Bible mistakenly identified this with leprosy, a disease that would have been unknown to the ancient Israelites.
Anyone in a state of impurity was not permitted to visit the temple until a certain period of time had passed and they had washed in a ritual bath.
The Gospels depict how Jesus interacts with many people who were experiencing ritual impurity. At the end of every one of those episodes, the people he meets are no longer in a state of ritual impurity. Their encounter with Jesus results in both their healing and purification.