The Story of Judaism

For months I’ve been looking for a good introduction to Judaism and I think I’ve found it in Jacob Neusner’s Judaism When Christianity Began: A Survey of Belief and Practice. Neusner boasts an Ivy League education, Rabbinic ordination, and nearly 1,000 books or scholarly contributions. His definition of Judaism is wonderful.

The title of the book may be somewhat deceptive because Neusner is really interacting with Rabbinic Judaism through the first five centuries after Christ. Therefore, some of his descriptions of Judaism are not exactly descriptions of first-century Judaism. However, his definition of Judaism may be timeless (see pp. 1-2):

“Judaism is a religion. A religion, whatever else it is, is a story - ‘our story.’ A religion is the story that a group tells to explain where it has come from, where it is going, what it is, in accord with God’s plan. People who tell themselves that story form the faithful of a religion. Those who tell some other story, or no story at all, do not. The story that embodies a religion may speak of past or future, but always animates the present and appeals to the here and now: ‘This tells who we are.’ When the faithful of Judaism gather at the formal meal, or Seder, to celebrate the Passover, ‘the season of our freedom,’ when the Israelite slaves, led by Moses, were freed by God from Egyptian slavery, they tell the story…

[Neusner proceeds to quote the Passover story from Exodus]

The liturgy of the Passover meal now permits us to define Judaism through its story…Judaism is the religion that tells itself this story of exile and redemption, slavery and deliverance, at God’s hands. The community of Judaism, which calls itself ‘Israel’ meaning ’supernatural social entity’ (not to be confused with the secular and political sense of ‘Israel,’ meaning ‘the state of Israel’) is made up of the people who tell themselves this story and not some other. To practice Judaism is to identify oneself with the story of Israel redeemed from Egypt, to take for one’s personal history and collective destiny the story of Israel, meaning, those that know and worship God, not idols.”

Neusner really emphasizes the fact that Israelites identify themselves with the historical narrative. That is, the present day Israelite is one who was in slavery and was delivered by the hand of God. The story is not only past, but the story is present as well.

I greatly appreciate this definition and really see how it can help define us as Christians. We are people of the story that culminates in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This death and resurrection is not only a historical reality for Christ, but a present reality for all who follow Christ. Christianity as “religion” is not about a list of beliefs, it is about identity with a story.