Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

JEWISH "NO" AND CHRISTIAN "YES"
Moses on Sinai; he contributed his share to interpreting the Torah, as
the Pharisees did, to let it pervade and influence all areas of life in a
time when many rules of behavior were not yet fixed, but were still a
matter of debate and even controversy. He shared Jewish hopes and
expectations of redemption although he may have rejected certain
political expressions of these expectations, as did other Jews, notably
among the Pharisees. Jewish and non-Jewish scholars confirm that
Jesus' teachings stood very near to Pharisee teachings. In all this,
Jesus put his own emphases as was done by other great teachers. He
was especially concerned about those Jews who lived on the margins
of Jewish society and were looked at askance by the majority: tax
collectors, prostitutes, and mentally and contagiously ill people. He
wanted to bring these lost sons and daughters of Abraham back to the
fold of the community of the covenant (see Luke 15:1-32; 19:1-10).
When I confess that "the Word became flesh" I affirm that in this
Jewish life lived according to the Torah, in which the image of God
became visible, God speaks to me. There is no doubt that such a life
according to the Torah has also been lived by others than Jesus, Jews
and non-Jews, before and after him. What makes the difference is the
Resurrection. But here, too, we are close to Pharisee conceptions.
Since the time of the Maccabees the big religious question for many
Jews was how one could reconcile the justice of God with the fact that
those who were faithful to the Torah were murdered and martyred.
The way of life according to the Torah seems to come to a dead end: as
soon as the image of God becomes visible in a human being or a
human community, it is destroyed by the powers of evil. It is in
response to these vexing questions that the belief in the resurrection of
those who died as martyrs sanctifying the name of God emerged in
Judaism and became strong especially in Pharisee circles. In the
resurrection the martyrs were vindicated or justified by God in the
face of the powers of evil.
Jesus, a Jew who lived according to the Torah, in whom the image of
God was visible, also died as a martyr. As so many other Jews, before
and after him, he died a typically Jewish death, a martyr's death, or,
with a profound Jewish expression, a death for the sanctification of
God's name, on a Roman cross. At this point the crucial event takes
place which is constituent for the Christian faith: the Resurrection of
Jesus from the dead. Through this event Jesus' disciples find hard
evidence that the image of God cannot be destroyed: "Why seek ye the
living among the dead?" The Resurrection means that the path of the
Torah does not come to a dead end but is the way of life. It means that
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