Early Jews Ignoring Early Christians

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 7:15 am by David Mills

Early Jews Ignoring Early Christians 2014-07-16T20:21:22-04:00 David Mills

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So far, in his reading of the Talmud, writes the literary critic Adam Kirsch, it hasn’t mentioned Christians at all. And then, he explains in his Tablet column, in Tractate Ta’anit appears the word notzrim, a name for Christians derived from Nazareth. The Talmud was written from the third to the fifth century A.D. (he uses C.E., of course) and one would think that the writers would have been concerned with the rising religion. But they weren’t. Kirsch explains:

The point of rupture in Jewish history, as the rabbis see it, was not the birth of Jesus but the Temple’s destruction, which suddenly made much of Jewish ritual and practice impossible. And this rupture was, crucially, internal to Judaism — not a challenge from another belief system, but one that involves repairing and reinventing Jewish life to meet changed circumstances.

We, modern Westerners, read history differently. The dominant narrative is Christian.

In Western culture, we tend to see Christian history as absolute history, and we learn about Jewish history largely in terms of its interactions with Christianity—whether that means persecution in the Crusades, or emancipation at the time of the French Revolution, or the failure of European assimilation in the 20th century. One reason I find it so illuminating to read the Talmud is that it presents an autonomously Jewish understanding of the world, in which Jews act rather than react. Indeed, the Talmud might even be said to struggle against the whole idea of history. Seder Mo’ed seems to inhabit a timeless time of ritual repetition, during which Jewish life strives to change as little as possible, keeping itself ready for the arrival of redemption.

Kirsch goes on to explain the reference to Christians, which is fleeting but interesting, and occurs in a discussion of fasting.

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