Who was Gedaliah, and why are Jews fasting for him?
It was a time of upheaval in the Israelite domain, as the Babylonians and Egyptians struggled over the land, during which a little-known Judean official named Gedaliah briefly came to the forefront.
By Elon Gilad | Sep. 18, 2014 | 9:16 AM

Jews fast on for Gedaliah, even if they don’t know who he was.
Jews fast on for Gedaliah, even if they don’t know who he was. Photo by Ayala Tal

The third of Tishrei is a Jewish fast day for observant Jews, who abstain from food and drink from dawn to dusk. Less well known is why.

Gedaliah was a high-ranking official in the Judean court in Jerusalem, as had been his father before him, Ahikam, and his father, Shaphan.

Shaphan was the man who delivered the book of Deuteronomy to King Josiah after it was mysteriously discovered in the Temple during renovations, which is a good point to start our story.

In about 640 BCE, King Amon of Judah was assassinated, leaving his 8-year old son Josiah to rule the Judean Kingdom. After Josiah received the Book of Deuteronomy from Shaphan, he began a series of profound religious reforms that involved the centralization of the Jewish cult in the Temple of Jerusalem, and around one single god. Most households of the time seem to have been polytheistic.

Meanwhile, the world around tiny Judea was in flux. The Assyrian Empire, which dominated the region and had destroyed the northern Israelite Kingdom just some 70 years earlier, was disintegrating. In the south, Egypt – the other regional superpower – was recovering from the Assyrian rule it had shaken off, and was concentrating on rebuilding its former glory.

This was an opportune moment for the Judeans to do some empire building of their own, or at least that was the vibrant Josiah thought.

Pharaoh to King Josiah: Why are you here?

Taking advantage of the power vacuum. The Judeans began gobbling up the territories to the north those that used to belong to the Israelite Kingdom. They may have been trying to reconstruct the unified kingdom of David and Solomon, which may or may not have existed, not that Josiah knew that.

Josiah didn’t plan to accomplish this alone: he allied with a rising power in the east, the Babylonians, who were starting to eclipse their former overlords the Assyrians.

Thus when in 609 BCE, Pharaoh Necho II led an army from Egypt up the Judean coast to aid the Assyrians in battle against the upstart Babylonians, Josiah led his army to Megiddo to block Necho’s path.

2 Chronicles quotes Necho’s ambassadors as telling Josiah: “What have I to do with thee, thou king of Judah? I come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith I have war; and God hath given command to speed me; forbear thee from meddling with God, who is with me, that He destroy thee not.” (35:21) But Josiah did not heed the Pharaoh and was killed in battle in Megiddo.

A statue believed to be of Pharaoh Necho Israeli, at the Brooklyn Museum. Photo by: Keith Schengili-Roberts, Wikimedia Commons
Josiah was succeeded by his younger son King Jehoahaz, but not for long. Three months later, on his way back from battle, Pharaoh Necho paid Judea a visit. He took Jehoahaz into captivity in Egypt and installed his older brother in his stead as King Jehoiakim. Necho also exacted a huge levy of gold and silver.

Judea was now a client state of Egypt, but that too was not to last long.

A few years later In 605 BCE, the Babylonians, led by Nebuchadnezzar II, defeated the Egyptian army in Carchemish (in modern-day Turkey). From there, they made their way to the gates of Jerusalem and laid siege.

Having decided that he wasn’t ready to die yet, Jehoiakim swapped allegiances, paid Nebuchadnezzar a levy and gave some relatives over as hostages. Judea was now a vassal of Babylon, but once again not for long.

The Babylonians lose their cool

Three years later, after the Babylonian invasion into Egypt had failed, Jehoiakim once again felt the Egyptians breathing down his neck. He decided to switch sides once more and ally himself with Egypt.

At this point, the Jerusalem court was split between supporters of alliance with Babylon and supporters of alliance with Egypt. Apparently, Gedaliah was on the Babylonian side, but Jehoiakim didn’t listen, which proved to be a fatal miscalculation.

In 599 BCE Nebuchadnezzar II returned to Judea, and he was sorely vexed. He laid siege to Jerusalem, during which Jehoiakim was killed, and his corpse was flung over the walls.

Jehoiakim was succeeded by his son Jeconiah, who ruled the besieged Jerusalem for all of three months until the city fell. Jeconiah, his family and 3,000 of the city’s upper echelon were taken into captivity in Babylonia.

Two years later, in 597 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar placed Jeconiah’s uncle (Josiah’s son) Zedekiah on the throne of Jerusalem. But the new monarch decided to switch allegiances and side with the new Egyptian Pharaoh, Hophra, which led to another Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 589 BCE.

A bust of Pharaoh Hophra, also known by his Greek appellation “Apries”. Photo by: Daniel Benutzer, Wikimedia Commons
When things started to look desperate, Zedekiah made a run for it, heading east down the Judean hills in the direction of the Dead Sea – only to be captured by the Babylonians. They killed his sons before his eyes, then blinded him so that their death would be the last thing he saw. Zedekiah joined his kin in captivity in Babylon, where he died.

The very brief rise of Gedaliah

Needless to say, Nebuchadnezzar had enough of these Judean troublemakers. He destroyed the Temple, sent the Judean urban classes into exile in Babylonia.

Then he placed one of the high-ranking officials of Jerusalem and member of the don’t-side-against-the-Babylonians-what-are-you-crazy?! faction – Gedaliah – as governor of the newly constituted Babylonian province of Yehud.

Gedaliah did not reign for long, though. Probably less than a year after his appointment, Ishmael son of Nethaniah, a Judean military commander and member of the royal family, led a group of captains to the administrative capital of Yehud, Mizpah, and assassinated Gedaliah during a feast, possibly for Rosh Hashanah.

Fearing Babylonian reprisal, the remaining Judeans fled into Egypt, ending Jewish autonomy in Judea.

During the long years of Babylonian Captivity, four fast days were established in memory of the destruction of Judea and the Temple. We first hear of these in the Book of Zechariah, when the Jews ask the prophet upon their return from captivity if they should continue to fast now that they had returned and rebuilt the Temple; or should they continue to mourn.

Zechariah tells them: “Saith the LORD of hosts; The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts; therefore love the truth and peace.” (8:19).

Rabbinic Judaism interpreted Zechariah’s “fast of the seventh month” as a fast commemorating the assassination of Gedaliah. Tosefta Sukkah 6:10 (redacted at the end of the 2nd century) says: “The fast of the seventh [month] is on the third of Tishrei – the day Gedaliah the Son of Ahikam was killed.”

Later rabbis suggested that in fact, Gedaliah was killed on Rosh Hashanah, but since we cannot fast on that day, the fast was postponed to the first available day – the third of Tishrei. Either way, Jews have been fasting in memory of Gedaliah ever since.

Segun tomado de, http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/high-holy-days-2014/.premium-1.616433 el domingo, 28 de sept. de 2014.

¿Quien es como Tú, Oh Di-s, que disculpa el pecado y perdona la trasgresión? …Tú echarás todos nuestros pecados dentro de las profundidades del mar. Y todos los pecados de Tu pueblo Israel Tú echarás en un lugar donde ellos no serán evocados ni contados, ni se pensará en ellos hasta la eternidad (plegaria de Tashlij en Rosh HaShaná).

Esta plegaria es dicha a la orilla de un lago o río, y un popular concepto erróneo se ha desarrollado de que nos despojamos de nuestros pecados arrojando migas de pan dentro del agua.
No se puede disponer de los pecados tan fácilmente. El único camino para deshacernos de nuestros pecados es teshuvá apropiada: sincero arrepentimiento, remordimiento, y una firme resolución de nunca repetir los malos actos.
El simbolismo del tashlij está en la plegaria. Una vez que hemos hecho lo que es necesario para lograr el perdón, nuestros pecados serán arrojados lejos para que nunca sean evocados ni contados, ni se piense en ellos otra vez.
Asi mismo,el agua simboliza la bondad de Di-s, los peces representan los ojos del Creador que siempre se encuentran abiertos velando por Sus creaciones. Esta costumbre tiene como objetivo, despertar la Misericordia Divina y simboliza el deshacernos de todos nuestros pecados.

Según tomado de, http://www.jabad.org.ar/festividades/rosh-hashana-festividades/tashlij/ el viernes, 19 de sept. de 2014.

Photo

“Why does everything about Jewish history have to be long and sad and filled with persecution?” This was the refrain Harry D. Wall said he heard all too often from his children during their travels, so he set out to correct that with Jewish Discoveries.

The website is devoted to telling the stories of Jewish communities around the world through the videos and photos Mr. Wall takes on trips, some of which are for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee relief and rescue organization. On it are his discoveries of synagogues, restaurants, community centers, even wineries. “There’s a lot more than ghettos and shtetls to see,” Mr. Wall said. Recently Mr. Wall talked about Jewish communities he’s visited. Following are edited excerpts.

Q. Where did you find a lesser-known side of Jewish culture?

A. Cape Town is a small but a very vibrant community, with a couple of good museums and the oldest synagogue in South Africa — the Great Synagogue, they call it — built in 1841.

Its great migration came at the end of the 19th century, almost entirely from Lithuania. And they got involved in so many different areas, started as peddlers and shopkeepers. They were allowed, from the beginning, to be involved in all aspects of society, so they made a significant contribution culturally. Even the wine in Stellenbosch, there’s a couple of wineries started by Jews; Graham Beck is probably the best known among them. Some of the most outspoken people in the anti-apartheid movement were Jewish, Helen Suzman, for example. The South African Jewish Museum goes into that.

What’s another small community? 

Mumbai has about 4,000 Jews living there today. Most have roots in a community called Benne Israel. They claim they arrived over 2,000 years ago on a boat fleeing Palestine and got shipwrecked on the Konkan Coast.

Though many Indian Jews have emigrated to the West or to Israel, there are a few synagogues that remain. Magen Hasidim synagogue, architecturally, isn’t very remarkable, but it is the main gathering place for the community, holidays, services, weddings and bar mitzvahs. The Magen David Synagogue was built in 1864, sponsored by the philanthropist David Sassoon. His community was known as the Bagdahdi Jews, those who arrived from Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. It’s light blue with a clock tower, the only time I ever saw one on a synagogue. Knesset Eliyahoo is another synagogue built by the Sassoon family. We had a Sabbath meal at the Joint Distribution Committee in Mumbai. Instead of challah, there was chapati bread, did the blessing over that, and tandoori chicken. Moshe’s has wonderful food, a mixture of Mediterranean and Indian. It’s always interesting to see how Jewish communities take on the local coloration.

Where were you most surprised?

Krakow, where a younger Jewish community has emerged around theJewish Community Center. They have some really good programs: literature, Torah readings, Hebrew lessons. I went to a Shabbat dinner, where there was easily a hundred people, and you get by easily in English. These are young people who may have had Jewish grandparents who were afraid of connecting with this culture, so it’s all emerging right now.

And this is only 60 miles from Auschwitz and right in the Old Jewish Quarter of Krakow, which for the most part is a bit of Disney World experience. You have these trams driving through and klezmer groups playing continuously, though they’re not Jewish musicians. It’s a bit kitschy, and you can sometimes question the tastefulness and the commercialization because you’re near hallowed ground there. You can have mixed feelings about it.

But you have the great synagogues there. You have the wonderful Galicia Jewish Museum there and this new younger community. On balance I think it is positive because it engages people.

Segun tomado de, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/travel/exploring-the-worlds-jewish-communities.html?mabReward=RI%3A11&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine&_r=0  el martes, 16 de sept. de 2014.

3,300-year-old ‘Titanic of the Med’ gives invaluable clues to Mideast’s past
The Uluburun Shipwreck is at the center of a study of five wrecks by Tel Aviv University’s Yuval Goren.

Where did the Ulubrun come from? And where was it headed?
By Ido Efrati | Sep. 13, 2014 | 1:01 AM

Wooden remains of wickerwork fencing, which may have lined the Uluburun’s bulwarks to keep out waves in rough weather. Photo by INA
About 3,300 years ago a large ship left the northern Mediterranean Sea region carrying a treasure of copper, tin, glass, gold, silver and other materials to an unknown destination.

In 1983 the ship was accidentally discovered by a 13-year-old diving for sponges near the Turkish fishing town of Kas. The copper ingots led the youth to go to the curator of the local museum.

The shipwreck was dug up by an excavation expedition of underwater archaeologists, first under the leadership of Professor George Bass and later under Professor Cemal Pulak, both from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University. Excavating and documenting the 10,000 items found on the ship was a 10-year project. The late Bronze Age shipwreck, known as the Uluburun Shipwreck, is seen as one of the most important underwater discoveries of the second half of the 20th century.

“This ship is an immense source of information about that period, there’s nothing to equal the extent of those findings,” says archaeologist Professor Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University. Goren is about to publish a series of studies dealing with a selection of findings on ancient shipwrecks from the second and first millennium BC, a project he has been working on for eight years.

Goren’s essays focus on new findings from five shipwrecks dating to the same era, with the Uluburun Shipwreck as the jewel in the crown.

An archaeologist replicating and consolidating damaged ingots using an underwater curing epoxy and plaster. Credit: INA

“The amount of essays written about that shipwreck could fill an entire room. It’s an endless source of various studies, including one focusing on the jaw of a mouse found on the ship,” says Goren.

Shipwrecks tend to enthrall people, they capture and preserve one traumatic moment experienced by a group of people at sea and encapsulates their entire life. Some of them, like the Titanic, have become box office hits. Most will remain the domain of archaeologists, museums and aficionados.

“In archaeology shipwrecks are especially interesting. They’re like time capsules from the past that have frozen time. In some cases they preserve everything that was in them, especially when they sink fast and in deep water, that’s when they’re preserved in good condition. The slower a ship sinks and the shallower the water, the more exposed it is to currents, animals and plants that attack the findings,” he says.

Unlike ships that sink in the modern era, finding ancient ships is an archaeological asset, enabling scientists a glimpse of trade routes, political and diplomatic relations, various seafaring techniques and even the sailors’ way of life thousands of years ago.

“In the Uluburun Shipwreck case, the questions that interested us were, who did the ship belong to? Where did it come from and where was it headed? We’re dealing with a ship from the late Bronze Age, when the Ramses dynasty ruled in Egypt,” says Goren.

The ships Goren is studying were discovered in the Mediterranean region, mainly along the Turkish border. Without an engine or navigation instruments, their captains had to sail with the currents, navigating by the stars and landmarks on the shore. This forced them to maintain eye contact with the shore. “Since the Turkish shore is rocky and indented, numerous ships were shipwrecked as they sailed along it,” he says.

Cypriot pithoid krater containing Cypriot fineware pottery. Credit: INA

It is difficult to ascertain what the ship’s destination was. Goren said the ship’s cargo, which was unprecedented in wealth and volume, was probably a royal shipment by an Egyptian ruler to another ruler in the Aegean Sea region. It is likely that it played a role in the regional interests and politics of the time.

The findings also provide a clue to the wealth and abundance of those days and the political use they were put to. The cargo consisted of hundreds of copper ingots weighing a total of ten tons, a ton of tin rods, 300 “containers” mostly filled with tree resin weighing a ton, 30 glass ingots, gold, jewelry, silver, which was more precious than gold at the time, and African ebony trees.

“It’s a huge cargo in terms of the ancient world. It’s a huge amount of raw materials, therefore it’s likely to be a royal shipment…Egyptian jewelry including a gold beetle – which was sacred to the Egyptians – with Nefertiti’s name on it – was also found.”

The scientists believe the intended recipient was a man of status and power in Cyprus or Greece.

“In contemporary terms, the loss of such a treasure would mean the bankruptcy of the insurance company,” says Goren.

For archaeologists, the lost crew of the ships also provide a clue to the mystery. Unlike vessels from later periods, these ships had no decks. They were large vessels with that consisted of one level, and the crew walked around on the cargo. When the ship sunk, therefore, the crew jumped ship and swam away; their skeletons weren’t found, and it is not known how many people were in the crew. Findings from other ships indicate that the crew of such a ship would have eaten cooked fish, and the archaeologists found fishing hooks, clay pots and barbecues in one of the ships.

“The crew’s equipment helps us trace the route of the ship. For example, the water containers, or flasks, they used were made of clay, and would break every once in a while. When the ship docked along the way the crew would buy new equipment,” says Goren. Analyzing the material that this equipment was made from, it is possible to ascertain where it was produced, and the same goes for cooking pots, candles, and other things that the crew used on a regular basis. “These are exactly the things we are looking for,” he says.

One of the interesting things that Goren’s study found is that oil lamps, drinking flasks and jugs were produced on Israel’s north coast, between the Carmel coast and Tyre and Sidon in Lebanon. “In the study I claim that this is a Canaanite ship. Canaan was ruled then by the Egyptians, whose ships were fit to for the waters of the Nile but not for sailing the seas, and for that they used the ships of the Canaanites who they ruled. My hypothesis is that an Egyptian ruler wanted to send the ship to a ruler in the area of the Aegean Sea, and that it sunk.

The Egyptians had interests in this area, and the ships were an important political tool in those days. This wasn’t an organized fleet like that of the British Navy in the 18th century, but it had an important role,” says Goren.
The ships back then were mainly used for trade, he says, and there was no such thing as a “cruise.”

Another thing found on the early ships was weapons in good condition from the area of Israel, Syria and Lebanon and the Aegean coast. The archaeologists have not been able to explain how a large stone axe from the Black Sea area got on to the Canaanite ship. “We don’t have an answer for that, maybe one of the sailors bought it in a market. In fact, we don’t know anything for certain. That’s what’s great about archaeology,” says Goren.

Segun tomado de, http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-1.615514, el viernes 12 de sept. de 2014.

Jesús y los judíos

EDWARD KESSLER | 01.05.2014

Los estudiosos del Nuevo Testamento han dedicado una enorme cantidad de energía al análisis del Jesús histórico, y en las últimas décadas, gran parte de sus esfuerzos han girado en torno a su condición de judío.

El redescubrimiento de la judeidad de Jesús por parte de los cristianos comenzó a fines del siglo XIX, pero se intensificó cuando los cristianos empezaron a prestarles cada vez más atención a los judíos y al judaísmo a la luz de la Shoah. A partir de los años 1960, se manifestó un deseo de reconciliación con el judaísmo y una mayor comprensión del mismo, representado por el Concilio Vaticano II y la publicación de Nostra Aetate en 1965.

En la actualidad, casi todos los estudios cristianos consideran seriamente la condición judía de Jesús, pero menos conocido es el trabajo de los investigadores judíos que, del mismo modo, han redescubierto el hecho de que el judaísmo ha nutrido al judío Jesús.

En la última parte del siglo XX, David Flusser y Géza Vermes, ambos continuadores del trabajo pionero realizado por un pequeño número de académicos judíos a comienzos de ese siglo (especialmente Martin Buber, Joseph Klausner y Claude Montefiore), fueron seguidos a su vez por tres nuevos investigadores judíos: Shmuley Boteach, Daniel Boyarin y Amy-Jill Levine.

Mientras que Flusser describía a Jesús como una figura carismática cuyas enseñanzas demostraban un extraordinario sentido de la misión, Vermes lo pintaba como un jasid galileo y un hombre santo. Para ambos, Jesús era un maestro carismático, un sanador y un profeta. Vermes en particular produjo el mayor impacto, como puede verse desde el título de su primer libro, Jesus the Jew, que en 1973 pareció revolucionario, pero que hoy es plenamente aceptado por los estudiosos neotestamentarios.

En la última década, Amy-Jill Levine retomó la línea de Géza Vermes y es hoy la especialista judía más prominente de su generación en el tema del Nuevo Testamento. En The Misunderstood Jew: the Church and the scandal of the Jewish Jesus(2006), dice que “Jesús fue un buen judío” que enseñaba a judíos en una tierra judía.

A Levine le preocupan particularmente las interpretaciones antijudías de los evangelios y las epístolas. Eso sucede sobre todo cuando, en un intento de destacar la singularidad de Jesús, se describe al pueblo judío y/o a las autoridades judías de la época como personas monolíticas, obsesivamente apegados a las reglas, indiferentes hacia los pobres y los marginados, y especialmente opresivas con las mujeres. Sin embargo, Levine también alienta a los judíos a apreciar a Jesús en continuidad con otros líderes y profetas de Israel. Afirma que Jesús se vestía, comía, enseñaba y oraba como un judío, discutía como un judío con otros judíos y sus seguidores eran judíos. Para que los judíos le presten atención al Nuevo Testamento, deben superar sus estereotipos, sostiene Levine.

“Algunos judíos piensan que muchas ideas cristianas son absurdas”, explica Levine. “‘¿Cómo se puede creer en una concepción virginal? ¿Cómo puede alguien volver de entre los muertos?’ Les parece que es una forma de paganismo, pero cuando les explico que esas afirmaciones cristianas se inscriben en el contexto del Segundo Templo judío, se sorprenden”.

Estos malentendidos surgen porque “los judíos no suelen hacer formalmente preguntas sobre el cristianismo”. El respeto debe ser recíproco, dice Levine. “Si quiero que mis vecinos cristianos respeten el judaísmo, tengo que respetarlos a ellos, y eso significa saber algo acerca de ellos más allá de Santa Claus y el conejo de Pascua. Debo saber qué dicen sus textos y hablar con ellos sobre la manera en que ellos entienden esos textos… Existe otra razón por la cual los judíos deben aprender sobre cristianismo: entender al cristianismo es una manera de fortalecer la propia identidad judía.

“Si queremos que los judíos sigan siendo judíos, no debemos decir falsedades sobre el cristianismo ni ocultar información: debemos educarnos a nosotros mismos … y tenemos que ver qué significa eso para nosotros y para los judíos que tienen interlocutores cristianos”.

The Jewish Annotated New Testament (2011), coeditado por Levine y Marc Z. Brettler, no sólo está escrito íntegramente por judíos sino que está destinado, al menos en parte, a judíos y a cristianos que “desean conocer más sobre el fondo judío del Nuevo Testamento”. Ambos editores coinciden en señalar que este trabajo es un testimonio del gran cambio que se ha producido en este tema desde que ellos empezaron a estudiarlo hace algunas décadas.

“Veinte o treinta años atrás, no había bastantes judíos que se dedicaran a este tema”, dice Brettler. “Pero en las últimas décadas se volvió más natural la idea de que parte de lo que se debe hacer al realizar estudios rabínicos, además de estudiar textos rabínicos hebreos y arameos, es estudiar el Nuevo Testamento”.

En Kosher Jesus (2012), Shmuley Boteach sostiene que el auténtico Jesús fue un judío observante de la Torah y un activo opositor a Roma. Al igual que Montefiore, que considera a Jesús como un proto-liberal judío, el Jesús de Boteach es un espejo de la propia versión del judaísmo del autor: ¬tradicional y comprometido con la Torah. Él describe a Jesús como “un maestro observante de la Torah que instruía a sus seguidores para cumplir cada letra de la Ley y cuyas enseñanzas citaban en forma extensiva la Biblia y los textos rabínicos, que luchó contra el paganismo romano y la persecución al pueblo judío, y fue muerto por Poncio Pilato por rebelarse contra Roma, y los judíos no tuvieron absolutamente nada que ver con su asesinato”.

Daniel Boyarin sostiene en The Jewish Gospels: the story of the Jewish Christ (2012) que muchos judíos siguieron a Jesús porque sus enseñanzas mesiánicas estaban en línea con las creencias judías. No sólo dice que Jesús y sus discípulos fueron judíos, sino que propone establecer un vínculo judío con las interpretaciones cristológicas propuestas por la Iglesia primitiva.

“Ahora casi todos, cristianos y no cristianos, admiten al hombre Jesús como un judío, pero yo quisiera dar un paso más”, escribe Boyarin. “Me gustaría que nosotros veamos que también Cristo – el divino Mesías – es un judío. La cristología, o las ideas tempranas sobre Cristo, también es un discurso judío y de ninguna manera – hasta mucho más tarde – un discurso antijudío… Por lo tanto, las ideas básicas subyacentes de las que surgieron la Trinidad y la Encarnación se encontraban ya en el mundo mismo en el que nació Jesús y que se describen en los evangelios de Marcos y Juan”.

Dicho de otro modo, el papel mesiánico de Jesús no fue construido después de los hechos, como muchos suponen, por cristianos que querían describirlo como tal. En realidad, se trataba de una expectativa judía ya existente, que Jesús trató de cumplir. Boyarin sostiene que la cristología no fue creada para Jesús sino sólo aplicada a Jesús. Lo que se conoció como cristianismo vino mucho más tarde, cuando los líderes religiosos y políticos trataron de imponer una nueva ortodoxia, que no estaba presente durante la vida de Jesús.

Tanto Boyarin como Boteach afirman que existen dos religiones firmemente establecidas, pero que en eso reside su debilidad, porque no hay una única línea o un único punto que diferencien al judaísmo y al cristianismo en forma definitiva en los primeros siglos de esta era. Hay varias líneas y varios puntos.

Al lector podría preocuparle que esta descripción sea tan compleja, pero hoy, los judíos y los cristianos pueden obtener una gran ventaja de esta falta de simplicidad: una comprensión realista del potencial intelectual y espiritual inherente al judaísmo y al cristianismo antes de que se volvieran religiones bien definidas y, hasta hace poco tiempo, opuestas. Y lo más  importante: una mejor apreciación de las ideas cruciales del judío Jesús.

Segun tomado de, http://www.jcrelations.net/Jes__s_y_los_jud__os.4650.0.html?L=5 el lunes, 8 de sept. de 2014.