The Gospel according to Moses: What My Jewish Friends Taught Me about Jesus

Introduction

A Stranger among You

The Torah was given in the desert, given with all publicity in a place to which no one had any claim, lest, if it were given in the land of Israel, the Jews might deny to the Gentiles any part in it.

—Mekilta on Exodus 19:2[1]

Life’s most important moments are often disguised as the commonplace. Take this moment for example. As Philip and I make small talk about business and family, we say the things one says when catching up with a casual aquaintance. Then the conversation shifts to religion. He says his Reform Jewish temple has interfaith gatherings every year to reach out to members of other religions. Since I am a Christian, he wants me to come to a thing called Chever Torah, in honor of something else he calls an "interfaith Shabbat." My ignorance of Judaism is prodigious, so I ask Philip the meaning of Shabbat (it means Sabbath) and of course those mysterious words, Chever Torah (the Torah Society, or Torah Group). Chever Torah, says Philip, is basically a Bible study. Will I come?

Unaware that Philip’s simple invitation will change my life as a Christian forever, I accept.

Two weeks later, filled with trepidation at the thought of studying the Scriptures with people who don’t believe in Jesus, I knot my tie and head to temple. There I enter a hall filled with about one hundred and fifty people, half of whom are members of a local church invited for the occasion. Chever Torah meets in a lofty room clad in brick. To my surprise, the place reeks of modernity. I am disappointed, having hoped to experience something more along the lines of dark wood paneling and rough-cut ashlars, preferably lit by candles and partially obscured by wavering tendrils of incense. But the crowd sits at rows of ordinary folding tables draped with white paper. There are no dated black hats, no unkempt beards, no parchment scrolls. These people are as hopelessly modern as the architecture. Many have large books open on the tables before them. Bibles, I suppose. Peering surreptitiously at a woman’s copy across the way, I observe the controlled chaos of Hebrew text on the pages, row after row of dots and squiggles. My disappointment fades slightly. At least this is something Jewish.

A man in a dark suit rises to speak. For the benefit of the Christians present, he introduces himself as Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman. Although he wears no yarmulke or prayer shawl, his full gray beard and proper bald spot lend the bookish air one expects of a rabbi. He speaks of his pleasure at seeing so many new faces this morning, his large brown eyes sparkling as he surveys the crowd. Rabbi Zimmerman is good with words, and I begin to hope something unusual might yet be salvaged from the otherwise mundane morning. Then the rabbi identifies a man sitting to his left as Dr. George Mason, pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church. His complimentary remarks about Dr. Mason sound ominously like the introduction of a featured speaker. This suspicion is bitterly confirmed when the rabbi steps back and the pastor approaches the podium.

My mood turns sour. Have I been lured away from my comfortable Saturday morning routine with false expectations of the exotic, only to be subjected to a Bible study led by a fellow Christian? I sigh and settle in, feeling the inevitable sermon-inspired drowsiness rise behind my eyelids.

After five minutes, it is clear that Dr. Mason is every bit as fine a public speaker as the rabbi, but this does little to improve my frame of mind. Then a hand is raised, an elderly gentleman near the front asks the pastor a question, and my grouchy train of thought is stopped dead in its tracks.

This is not a Christian kind of question.

It is more aggressive somehow, less deferential to the subject at hand. It may not be asked in the exotic, incense-tinted atmosphere I had hoped for, but it is different nonetheless . . . definitely different. I sit a bit straighter. Perhaps I will get some sense of the Jewish world after all.

As it happens, I get much more than that. The instant Dr. Mason finishes answering the old man’s question, hands shoot up everywhere. Penetrating comments fly across the room with astonishing candor as these Jews become determined miners sifting a rich stream of biblical material with questions unbounded by fear of heresy and unlimited by preconceived notions. I crane my neck to see what kind of people would ask such remarkable things, but these Chever Torah Jews still look like my father, or my wife, or my friend—the usual faces one sees in a crowd. Who could have known?

All too soon it is over. Outside on the sidewalk, Philip asks for my reaction. Basking in the afterglow of this Chever Torah experience, I gush, I loved it! I wish I could come every week! After a moment’s pause, Philip says, Well, I don’t see why you couldn’t.

And so began the five-year odyssey that led me to write this book.

I am ill prepared to teach a Jew about his or her own religion, and fortunately not foolish enough to try. Where important differences between Judaism and Christianity arise within these pages, I will do my best to explain both perspectives fairly, but Reform Jews will undoubtedly have some objections to my presentation of their perspective. For this I apologize in advance. Jewish friends have read rough drafts of this work and attempted to correct my errors, but any remaining mistakes are mine alone and not the responsibility of those who tried to help.

Among those who read early drafts of this book is Philip, the casual aquaintance who first invited me to Chever Torah. Philip has become my dearest friend over the years and is a very devout Jew. He expressed concern that Jews who do not know me may mistake my purpose, believing this is just one more thinly veiled attempt to convert them to Christianity.

It is not.

But after five years at Chever Torah, I know why Philip is worried, so let me be clear about my intentions. In The Gospel according to Moses, I will show that Christianity is a reasonable response to the books of Moses, the writings, and the prophets. For Christian readers, I hope this will be a welcome confirmation that the most basic tenets of our faith are rooted in the earliest moments of creation, in the Garden, in the cool of the day. Ours is a Torah-based faith. For Jewish readers, I hope this will demonstrate that our religious differences flow from a genuine divergence of informed opinion on the meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures, not from scriptural ignorance.

Some of my friend Philip’s concern about Jewish suspicion of my motives may also be relieved if I promise not to disguise my beliefs only to unveil them when the reader’s back is turned. Within these pages I will describe how my faith has been informed and enriched by contact with Jews and Judaism, but make no mistake: this book is about Christian faith. And just as honesty forbids the disguise of my bias within these pages, it also means I must not compromise basic tenets of the Christian faith, not even to build bridges. I agree wholeheartedly with these words by a famous atheist:

The other day at the Sorbonne, speaking to a Marxist lecturer, a Catholic priest said in public that he too was anticlerical. Well, I don’t like priests who are anticlerical any more than philosophers who are ashamed of themselves.

—Albert Camus[2]

Like Camus, I am not much for the easy religious pluralism one often hears espoused today. The differences between Christianity and Judaism are too important to ignore or minimize.

That does not mean there is little value in learning from each other. When I first wrote this book, the newspaper headlines were already filled with churches burning, synagogues defaced, and hate-filled men attacking Christian and Jew alike. While this book was being considered for publication, Muslim terrorists inflicted history’s most deadly attack on the United States in the name of their religion. In this time of increasing violence against persons of faith by those who hate us for our specific beliefs, or simply because we do believe, all people of the book should stand together. But we are often divided by misunderstandings, which have grown through centuries of isolation between the Christian and Jewish communities. If ever there was a time to learn the truth about our differences from each other rather than reinforce false assumptions among ourselves, it is now. And we must respect those differences, even as we search for genuine common ground and cultivate it side by side. As the novelist Tom Clancy once wrote: One hallmark of intellectual honesty is the solicitation of opposing points of view.

So while I do intend to avoid proselytization, I have no intention of leaving the reader untouched. This applies to Christians and Jews alike. Unless we are gagged and blindfolded by preconceived ideas, all worthwhile encounters change us in some important way. Heaven knows the Jews of Chever Torah have changed me. Being a conservative Christian at a liberal Jewish temple has never been easy or painless, but I have accepted the cost because my religion teaches that constructive growth is worth a little pain.[3] Key positions of Christianity have been strongly disputed almost every week at Chever Torah by highly intelligent people who know the Scriptures well and find very different truths there. At first I responded to the challenges with dogmatic inflexibility, experiencing a range of unpleasant emotions from anger to anxiety. Only God’s subtle prodding can explain why I kept returning. Then somehow—again, I believe this can only be explained as an act of God—I found the ability to set aside my preconceived notions and truly hear the new ideas these Jews tossed back and forth. From that moment on, the people of Chever Torah began to coach me in that decidedly Jewish pastime: wrestling with God. Now, after years of Bible study among them, I have learned to think about important things like faith and obedience, justice and mercy, and rebellion and redemption in Jewish ways, and in so doing have found deeper meanings within every word uttered by Jesus and his apostles. Strange as it may seem, the Jewish perspective of Chever Torah has given me a richer, more solid foundation for my own faith. It has become a cliché in Christian circles to say, Judaism is the root of Christianity, but Chever Torah has breathed real life into those words for me. I have uncovered my Jewish roots, examined them, and fed upon the nourishment that flows up into the sheltering branches of my own belief.

Years ago I exposed myself to the possibility that Judaism might have great truths to offer, and Chever Torah rewarded my open mind with radical improvements in the way I live and view my Christian faith. In the same way, with openness and proper respect for the importance of ideas, it is my earnest hope that something within the covers of this book will challenge the preconceived notions of every reader and result in a deeper relationship with the One who made us all.

one

God on the Spot

Frequently questions or objections, which men might raise to something in God’s conduct of affairs in the world, are put into the mouth of the angels, to give God, so to speak, occasion to explain or justify his ways.

—Bereshit Rabbah, 8, 3

What was the difficulty for Rashi?

Rabbi Peter Berg, the newest addition to the staff at temple has just posed a question that is centuries old. The tall and slender rabbi searches our faces for an answer. It is a question rabbis love to ask, a question I too will learn to cherish. The medieval French rabbi and Bible scholar known as Rashi (an acronym for his full name, Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac) found many difficulties in the Bible. These included apparent contradictions, apparent flaws in logic, enigmatic stories that occupy pride of place within the text yet have no apparent rhyme or reason, verses that seem out of context, and words, phrases, or entire stories that are repeated for no clear purpose. In Rabbinic Judaism, such difficulties are called koshim. They can be volatile, dangerous stuff. Once they drove me far from God.

My foundation in Bible study was laid in my parents’ devout Christian home, where I began memorizing simple Bible verses almost before I could read. I remember Bible drills when I was seven or eight years old. My Sunday school class was given a verse to look up as quickly as possible. The first to find it won something, usually a little sticker to affix inside the cover of his or her Bible. By the time I was eight or nine I had already been taught much of the doctrine that the church has long associated with each of these verses: the nature of sin, faith, and redemption, and the attributes of God and humanity. But by the age of sixteen, I had more questions than answers. For example, there are two accounts of the gathering of the animals into Noah’s ark, the famous one when they come in pairs, and another, rarely mentioned in churches, in which they come in sevens. Why two accounts? Why pairs in one and groups of seven in the other? Such difficulties in a document I had been taught to view as the flawless word of God were disturbing, but they were merely the tip of the iceberg. More far-reaching issues surfaced as my mind matured. How can God promise Abraham that his descendants will be a blessing to all nations, knowing full well that he will send those same descendants into Canaan with a command to slaughter every man, woman, and child? And how can God be so holy that he will not allow sin into his presence, yet also exist everywhere simultaneously in a universe filled with sin?

I became convinced that the Bible was filled with mistakes and half-baked truisms. I reacted to these difficulties by abandoning the faith of my childhood for a time, descending to a life of hedonism and destructive behavior. But although Rashi also found these kinds of difficulties, his response and mine could not have been more different. Rashi confronted his koshim squarely, with an open and inquiring mind. The result was one of the most widely respected commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures in existence, a body of work on the order of Augustine’s City of God or Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Why did Rashi and I respond to the difficulties in such radically different ways?

On one level, it is an impossible question to answer. Our times and civilizations surely played a role in causing these dissimilar reactions, but with nine centuries dividing us there is no way to accurately access the psychological and cultural disparity between Rashi and me. On another level, our diverse responses can easily be explained by an all-important difference in religious backgrounds. Rashi was trained to wrestle with God like Jacob at Bethel, to bargain with him like Abraham at the trees of Mamre, to argue with him like Moses at Mt. Sinai. Rashi’s people have an ancient tradition of questioning God face-to-face, as a man speaks with his friend.[1] Conversely, I abandoned my faith because it seemed I had no right to question the difficulties, much less expect answers. I had been taught to accept readymade dogma rather than to personally take my doubts to God.

Make no mistake; I do not blame the church for my lost time. I might well have fallen away no matter what. But it is just possible that several years of painful isolation from the Lord might have been avoided had I learned at an early age this simple truth that most Reform Jews know:

God loves an honest question.

Before I learn Rashi’s secret, many of the questions asked by the Jews of Chever Torah appall me. Nothing seems to be out of bounds, no subject too sacred for doubt and challenge. I squirm in my seat as they dare to ask if God might be limited, or in a learning process, or fickle, or mean spirited. One Chever Torah woman even suggests that Adam might have been a homosexual!

I stare at the ceiling, watching for lightning bolts.

More than once I think of leaving, but I stay, irresistibly drawn to Chever Torah in spite of my discomfort with these outlandish questions. And now, long after the novelty of studying with people of another religion has disappeared, I remain enthralled, thinking back to last week’s lesson or looking forward to the one to come. Yet those questions, those heretical, sometimes even blasphemous, questions often fill me with fear and indignation. I am attracted and repelled simultaneously. It is such a strange sensation. What does it mean? Why does questioning God make me so nervous? Why does it attract me anyway? Who am I to search for more?

Abraham stands on a high place speaking with the Creator, and Abraham is worried. God has said he may destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness. But Abraham’s nephew, Lot, and Lot’s wife and daughters live down below, and for all Abraham knows, there are others in the cities who are innocent of those crimes.

What to do?

Abraham, the original Jew, does what the people of Chever Torah do. He takes a deep breath and questions God. Listen to the nerve of the man:

Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?

—Genesis 18:25

When we read that question at Chever Torah, the rabbi laughs and says, "You’ve got to admire the chutzpah of this guy." Suddenly, I look at the story with brand new eyes. It is true: not only did Abraham ask God a question; he questioned God’s very motives! Then, far from punishing Abraham, far from cursing him or withdrawing from him, God responded by making him an offer:

If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.

—Genesis 18:26

Later that day, while walking with my mother and my wife at an arboretum near my home, I am troubled. I linger behind, shuffling along in the shade, pondering the meaning of this enormous story. How is it possible that a man could question the motives of God Almighty, yet be drawn closer as a result? Surely no one could get away with asking, Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?

And yet . . . and yet. . . .

God actually bargained with Abraham, from fifty righteous people, down to forty-five, to thirty, to only ten, giving him the answer he wanted each time he asked. Somehow, Abraham’s impudent questions seemed to deepen his relationship with God.

Alone beneath the pecans and oaks, I feel as if the Lord has driven me like Abraham to a high place and left me standing there, aching to ask a question of my own. It goes against everything I have ever believed about approaching God. Will not the Judge of all the earth do right. . . . Such a question! How dare he doubt the Lord that way?

Dare I?

The story is there in the Bible. It must be true. And if it worked for Abraham at the oaks of Mamre, maybe it could work for me at the oaks of the arboretum. So, in a moment of utter recklessness, I accept the challenge. I ask God my own first truly honest question in many years.

I ask if I may ask.

The answer comes instantaneously, as if God has been waiting on the edge of his throne. It is simple, profound, and so undeniably clear it might have been spoken aloud:

Asking is not doubting. It is trusting.

In that instant, I understand that it takes more faith to ask than it takes to fear the asking. It takes faith to be ready for whatever answer comes, and faith to persevere with more questions if the answer is not understood. Asking an honest question means being ready to change in response to the answer, and short of martyrdom, change may be the ultimate act of faith.

How wonderful now to know I can question the Lord without fear of faithlessness! How wonderful to be unafraid to ask God, knowing he will answer. Every time that happens, my faith in him grows stronger.

Genesis teaches that I am made in God’s image. Granted, the Lord is the essential reality and I the mere reflection, but if I reflect him, then surely some of my most basic instincts began in him. I think one of those instincts is a desire to be the focus of attention. I experience a small thrill when someone says, May I ask you a personal question? They have just revealed a wish to know me more deeply. It could be that God feels that thrill as well.

Consider the most basic question in any new relationship: What’s your name? No matter how separated by language and culture, two people invariably make that question part of their meeting ritual, a way to demonstrate interest in each other and show good intent. Even the most primitive of responses—Me Tarzan, you Jane—is a sign of respect between persons, an acknowledgment of another’s existence as an individual.

But the response cannot come until someone asks a question.

When God appears to Moses as a voice within a burning bush, he tells Moses to go to Egypt to bring the Hebrews to the Promised Land. Then Moses, feeling the need to understand who is sending him, demonstrates his desire to know more about God by asking a question:

Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, What is his name? Then what shall I tell them?

—Exodus 3:13

Because of Moses’ question, humanity draws a step closer to God at this pivotal moment when the Creator answers:

I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I Am has sent me to you.

—Exodus 3:14

This is more than an answer. It is an overture to increased intimacy. The Lord answers with his most intimate personal name. I Am is not just some variation on a Cananite word for God, like Elohim or El Shaddai. It speaks directly to God’s fundamental essence. It is as if the Lord has said, You don’t have to call me ‘Mister Jones’ anymore. You can call me Bill. God reveals his desire to be on a first-name basis with humanity, and that remarkable breakthrough comes about because one man dares to ask the Lord a question.

Dare I?

At the church of my youth, I somehow got the idea that only a prideful person would dare to question the Lord. At Chever Torah I have learned that sometimes asking questions is a way to demonstrate humility, because inherent in the question is the assumption that I do not have the answer; God does. Sincere questions give God respect. They acknowledge his power. They honor him.

Moses learns this as he leads the Israelites out of Egypt. With the famous ten plagues of Egypt and the divided sea behind him, it seems Moses may be getting a bit smug. This is only natural. After all, Moses’ outstretched hand parted the waters, Moses prophesied the ten miraculous plagues that convinced Pharaoh to let the people go, and Moses alone had been chosen by the Creator of the universe for the job of leading his people. Small wonder this man begins to believe his own wisdom is up to the task of answering every single question in Israel. So Moses sets himself up as Israel’s only judge, the final authority for all disputes. Only pride run amuck can explain such foolish behavior from an otherwise intelligent fellow. In the ordinary course of things God might let the natural result run its course, teaching Moses as most of us are taught, through the school of hard knocks. But in this case there is no time. The next event on God’s to-do list is the revelation of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. God wants Moses to come to the mountaintop now, and in order to survive such close encounters with the Master of the universe, all self-centered pride must be checked at the door. So the Lord sends Moses a message through his father-in-law, a Midianite priest named Jethro:

Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people’s representative before God and bring their disputes to him.

—Exodus 18:19

To his credit, Moses follows his wise father-in-law’s advice and by so doing humbly admits that he is not up to answering all of the people’s questions after all. I too would be wise to follow Jethro’s advice, taking my questions to the Lord, along with the humble acknowledgment that I am not up to answering them myself.

Of course, there is true humility, and there is false humility. The two are easily confused. Is it humility or is it a warped kind of pride to assume the Lord cannot stoop low enough to hear my little questions? The Hebrew Scriptures are clear: God is not above a little stooping now and then:

You give me your shield of victory; you stoop down to make me great.

—2 Samuel 22:36

I must never think, I’ve sunk too far. Even God cannot help me now. Believing I am beneath the Lord’s reach is the same as believing I am above it. Above or beneath—either way I pretend I am beyond God’s power, and that is something he will not tolerate.

This does not mean there are questions I must not ask. It simply means I must be careful of my attitude when I do the asking. For example, again and again as the Hebrews move through the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula, they complain to Moses. Many of their complaints are framed as questions. As they stand trapped at the edge of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army intent on their destruction and approaching fast, they ask Moses, Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?[2] Wandering thirsty in the wilderness, they