Levine is particularly concerned with anti-Jewish interpretations, which arise from the gospels and epistles. This primarily happens when, in an attempt to set aside Jesus as unique, the Jewish people and/or leaders of his time are depicted as monolithic, obsessively rule-bound, unconcerned with the poor and outcast, and particularly oppressive to women. However, Levine also encourages Jews to appreciate Jesus in continuity with other leaders and prophets of Israel. She describes how Jesus dressed, ate, taught and prayed like a Jew, argued like a Jew with other Jews, and amassed Jewish followers. For Jews to pay attention to the New Testament, they must move beyond their stereotypes, Levine argues. The initialism INRI (as opposed to the full inscription) was in use by the 10th century ( Gero Cross, Cologne, ca. 970). After Jerusalem’s Second Temple (shown here in a model) was destroyed, some Jesus followers’ concerns with impurity receded when no one could visit the Temple. ( Ariely/Wikimedia Commons), CC BY

Mihálycsa, Erika (2017). " 'Weighing the point': A Few Points on the Writing of Finitude in Ulysses". Reading Joycean Temporalities. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-34251-4. inri". Diccionario de la lengua española (in Spanish). Real Academia Española . Retrieved 16 March 2020. 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. For example, in Gospel stories describing the life of Jesus, people with lepra are purified when Jesus heals them. Hebrew ימים, נור, רוח, יבשת ( Yammīm, Nūr, Rūaḥ, Yabešet, "water, fire, wind, earth" — the four elements)There are a few references to Jesus in 1st-century Roman and Jewish sources. Documents indicate that within a few years of Jesus’ death, Romans were aware that someone named Chrestus (a slight misspelling of Christus) had been responsible for disturbances in the Jewish community in Rome ( Suetonius, The Life of the Deified Claudius 25.4). Twenty years later, according to Tacitus, Christians in Rome were prominent enough to be persecuted by Nero, and it was known that they were devoted to Christus, whom Pilate had executed ( Annals 15.44). This knowledge of Jesus, however, was dependent on familiarity with early Christianity and does not provide independent evidence about Jesus. Josephus wrote a paragraph about Jesus ( The Antiquities of the Jews 18.63ff.)—as he did about Theudas, the Egyptian, and other charismatic leaders ( History of the Jewish War 2.258–263; The Antiquities of the Jews 20.97–99, 167–172)—but it has been heavily revised by Christian scribes, and Josephus’s original remarks cannot be discerned. Further, not all the sayings and deeds in the Synoptic Gospels are reports of things that Jesus actually said and did. Believing that Jesus ascended into heaven, the early Christians spoke to him in prayer and sometimes he answered (2 Corinthians 12:8–9; cf. 1 Corinthians 2:13). Those early Christians did not distinguish between “the historical Jesus” and “the heavenly Lord” as firmly as most modern people do, and some sayings heard in prayer almost certainly ended up in the Gospels as sayings uttered by Jesus during his lifetime.

Quigley, Megan (2015). Modernist Fiction and Vagueness: Philosophy, Form, and Language. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-316-19566-6. Already regarded as a turn-in-the-road book, this historical study eschews most theological elements and jolts Christian readers into relocating Jesus in his original Jewish environment. Positive thinking about an often forgotten context; readable by nonspecialists." We know more about Jesus than we know about many ancient historical figures, a remarkable fact given the modesty of his upbringing and the humility of his death. Jesus did not grow up in one of the great cities of the ancient world like Rome or even Jerusalem but lived in a Galilean village called Nazareth. He died an appalling, humiliating death by crucifixion, reserved by the Romans for the most contemptible criminals.

Jesus Within the Context of First-Century Judaism

Szczerbowski, Tadeusz (1998). "Language Games in Translation: Etymological Reinterpretation of Hierograms". In Strässler, Jürg (ed.). Tendenzen Europäischer Linguistik: Akten des 31. Linguistischen Kolloquiums, Bern 1996. Linguistiche Arbeiten. Vol.381. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110913767. ISSN 0344-6727. Ironside, H.A. (2006). John. Ironside Expository Commentaries Series. Kregel Publications. ISBN 978-0-8254-9619-6. Binz, Stephen (2004). The names of Jesus. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications. ISBN 1-58595-315-6. OCLC 56392998. Although the vast majority of Jews did not belong to a party, the study of these parties reveals the substantial variety within the general framework of Judaism. Another indicator of this variety was the diversity of Jewish leaders. Among them were charismatic healers and miracle workers, such as Honi the Circle Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa; hermitlike sages, such as Bannus; eschatological prophets, such as John the Baptist; would-be messianic prophets, such as Theudas and the Egyptian; and apocalyptic visionaries, represented by the pseudepigraphal First Book of Enoch.

It is this difference between being a Jew ethnically and religiously that lies behind Paul’s statement in Romans 2:28-29: “For he is not a real Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal.” France, R. T. (2007). The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Pub. ISBN 978-0-8028-2501-8. OCLC 122701585. That such a person could have become so significant in world history is remarkable. But how much can we know with certainty about the Jesus of history? How reliable are the New Testament accounts about him? Opinions vary widely among scholars and students of the Bible. Gospel accountsChristian supersessionism has not only fed into negative perceptions of Jews and Judaism since antiquity, but has also incited violence against Jews. Whatever one thinks about the historicity of the events described in the Gospels, and there are many different views, one thing is not in doubt: Jesus had an overwhelming impact on those around him. The Gospels speak regularly of huge crowds following Jesus. Perhaps they gathered because of his reputation as a healer. Perhaps they gathered because of his ability as a teacher. Whatever the cause, it seems likely that the authorities' fear of the crowd was a major factor leading to Jesus' crucifixion. In a world where there was no democracy, mobs represented a far greater threat to the Romans' rule than anything else. Christians are those who Paul refers to as being inwardly (religiously) Jewish, while non-Christian Jews are those who he refers to as being outwardly (ethnically) Jewish. The former condition, he stresses, is the more important. Matthew’s Gospel was written by a Jewish believer in Jesus and for other Jewish believers in Jesus. So regardless of its polemical nature, it is unlikely that Matthew would have intended or approved the use of these verses as both a curse and a pretext for violence against all Jews throughout time. Avoiding anti-Judaism

Andreopoulos, A. (2005). Metamorphosis: The Transfiguration in Byzantine Theology and Iconography. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. ISBN 978-0-88141-295-6. The use of the terms king and kingdom and the role of the Jews in using the term king to accuse Jesus are central to the discussion between Jesus and Pilate. In Mark 15:2, Jesus responds to Pilate, "you have said so" when asked if Jesus is the King of the Jews and says nothing further. In John 18:34, he hints that the king accusation did not originate with Pilate but with "others" and, in John 18:36, he states: "My kingdom is not of this world". However, Jesus does not directly deny being the King of the Jews. [11] [12] While by now almost everyone, Christian and non-Christian, is happy enough to refer to Jesus, the human, as a Jew, I want to go a step beyond that,” writes Boyarin. “I wish us to see that Christ too – the divine Messiah – is a Jew. Christology, or the early ideas about Christ, is also a Jewish discourse and not – until much later – an anti-Jewish discourse at all … Thus the basic underlying thoughts from which both the Trinity and the Incarnation grew are there in the very world into which Jesus was born and in which he was first written about in the gospels of Mark and John.”

See also

After the destruction of Jerusalem’s Second Temple under Roman occupation in 70, some followers of Jesus felt there was no longer a reason to be concerned with impurity because no one could visit the temple. Only some of the extant early Greek manuscripts of Luke’s Gospel include the reference to the languages in verse 23:38. [21] [22] This variance may be a result of later copyists adding to Luke to harmonize that Gospel with the text of John 19:20. [23] The New International Version (NIV) translation and 43 of the 63 translations of Luke 23:38 assembled by BibleGateway.com omit any reference to the languages. [24] Breuer, Yochanan (2006). "Aramaic in Late Antiquity". In Katz, Steven T. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Judaism Vol. IV: The Late Roman-Rabinic Period. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521772488. In fact, many early Christians, some of whom were Jews and others of whom were non-Jews, continued to observe aspects of ritual purity, only abandoning it partially and over time. Avoid perpetuating anti-Judaism Brown, R.E. (1988). The Gospel and Epistles of John: A Concise Commentary. Concise Commentary. Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-1283-5.