Founders Of The Church: Rabbinic Double Agents?

A bible teacher from Salanter Akiba Riverdale (SAR) High School led a room of more than 50 breakfasting listeners through a whirlwind, eye-opening lecture on the Jewish originators and founders of Christianity.

Shuli Taubes spoke at a memorial breakfast this past Sunday for the mother, grandmother and shloshim of the father of Danny Hiller, past president of Congregation Beth Shalom. Ms. Taubes is a teacher of Tanakh and Jewish Philosophy at SAR High School and holds a BA in history from Barnard College and a Masters in Divinity from Harvard Divinity School.

Both Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, as well as Efrat Rabbi, Shlomo Riskin, found commonalities between Judaism and Christianity in that both have a messianic element, noted Shuli Taubes, but differ in whether it will be the first or “second” time that the Messiah is making his appearance.

In the course of the presentation entitled “The Founders of the Church: Rabbinic Double Agents?” Taubes discussed various views throughout history, including those that put the story of the foundation of Christianity in the context of first century Judaism, the views in liberal Christianity that Judaism is for the Jews and everybody else should be Christian, and the traditional Christian view that Christianity supersedes Judaism.

Taubes gave a brief and rapid overview of early Christianity and its texts, noting that the gospels were purportedly written from fifty to a hundred years after Jesus was supposed to have lived and have no historical or objective outside source. She pointed out the persecution of the early Christians, that someone named Saul, who had never met Jesus, changed his name to Paul, and began spreading this new religion, converting communities around the Mediterranean. He wrote letters to these communities, in an effort to maintain contact with them, that were later compiled into books.

How, she asked, did the Jews respond to this? She explained that there is relatively little comment in the Talmud and Mishna; that there are no absolute references to Yeshu (Jesus), nor are there references to Paul in the Gemara. She also stressed that there was a lot of censorship of the Gemara.