Christianity
in Jewish Theology
Webmaster’s Note: The draft outline below was
the result of a request made by the Catholic bishops of France in 1968 to then
Chief Rabbi Jacob Kaplan for a description of Jewish opinions on Christianity.
Relevant rabbinic commentaries over the centuries were assembled by a committee
composed of the celebrated philosopher Emmanuel Levinas,
Eastern Studies specialist Georges Vajda, and Charles
Touati, president of the French rabbinate's doctrinal
commission.
The committee
was instructed that the project was to be an official statement conveying the
views of only the French rabbinate and that they should draw upon only the
works of universally recognized authoritative Jewish sages. The committee later
stated that they selected texts that represented the best spirit of Judaism.
They rejected polemical texts, noting that one could find similarly hostile
texts about Judaism in the Christian tradition. Those texts that judged
Christianity as idolatrous tended to come from pre-1000 C.E. materials. Later
in the Middle Ages more positive assessments of Christianity began appearing
among Jewish thinkers.
The committee
produced an outline making six assertions supported by the rabbinic
commentaries they collected. Their conclusions applied equally to
Christianity and Islam. The outline is interesting because it reflects French
Jewish thinking three years after the issuance by the Second Vatican Council of
Nostra Aetate in 1965. It also can
be compared with the American Jewish statement Dabru Emet published in
2000.
The outline
was not formally debated by the French rabbinical assembly until 1978, five
years after the French Catholic bishops had released their own pastoral letter
on Catholic-Jewish relations. A significant minority of the assembled rabbis
had grave reservations about the proposed statement, and seeing that consensus
would be impossible, Chief Rabbi Kaplan withdrew the proposal from
consideration.
Touati, the only surviving member of the drafting committee, seeing the
historical value of the outline, suggested its release to the general public.
Accordingly, it was published in the Revue des Études
Juives in
2001. In an article in the February 12, 2001 issue of Le Monde, the
chief rabbi of Paris, David Messas emphasized that
the 1968 text should not be understood as expressing the current views of the
French rabbinate and did not rule out the possibility of the rabbinical
assembly taking up the subject again. In the same article, René-Samuel Sirat, the former chief rabbi of
The following
English translation by Katherine E. Wolff, NDS is made available courtesy of
SIDIC.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Christianity
in Jewish Theology
Report
of the Commission of experts named by the Chief Rabbi of France and including
Mr. Lévinas, Mr. Touati and Mr. Vaida.
1. The rejection of Christianity could have been
avoided
In the famous anecdote in Talmud Babli Sanhedrin
107b and Sota 47a (texts which were censured by the Christian
censorship, but which can be found again in Hesronot Ha-shas and in the
Adin Steinsalz edition of Sanhedrin), a certain regret comes through,
when a barayta says the following :
« May the left hand always push away, but may the right hand bring
closer, contrary to what Elisha did when pushing away Gehazi with both hands or
Joshua b. Perahya when pushing away Jesus with both hands. »
2. The Christians are not idolaters ; they adore
the God who created the world and they have a certain number of beliefs in
common with the Jews
There are many texts.
Let us quote first of all Tosafot, Bekhorot 2b, shemma : « ‘The Christians’ all swear by the name
of saints whom they do not take to be divinities. Even though they mention the divine name in
thinking of Jesus, they never call upon idols : in addition, their thought is turned toward
God, the creator of heaven and earth.
Even though they associate the name of God and other things when they
have to take an oath, this is no transgression of the prohibition : lifney ‘iwwer lo titten mikhshol,
since the Noahides were not prohibited ‘association’ (shittuf). » Cf. also Tosafot, Sanhedrin 63b, asur
and Tosafot ‘Aboda Zara 2a, asur : « the non-Jews among us, we are sure
that they are not idolaters. » (The
Tosafot texts were also censured ; we are basing what we are saying
on the manuscripts and old editions ; cf. Urbach, Ba’aley ha-tosafot,
pp. 59-60.) In his commentaries on the
Talmud, Rabbenu Menahem ha-Meiri always emphasizes the fact that the Talmudic
laws concerning the pagans have neither the Christians nor the Muslims in mind,
whom he qualifies as ummot ha-gedurot be darkhey ha-dator (nations that
are ruled by religious norms) ; cf. among others his commentary on ‘Aboda
Zara, Schreiber edition, 1944, pp. 28, 48, 53, etc. and his commentary on Baba
qamma, Shlesinger edition, Jerusalem 1973, p. 330 : « Whoever belongs to the nations ruled
by religious norms and who serves the divinity in whatever way, even though
their belief might be far from our belief, they are like a perfect Israelite (Yisrael
gamur) where these things are concerned (for example, where the restitution
of lost objects is concerned). »
Cf. also Rosh, Sanhedrin, VII, 3 ; Shulhan ‘arukh, Orah
Hayyim, 156, §1 ; Hoshen Mishpaf, 425, §5 ; Moshe Rivkes, Be’er
ha-gola on this last text, the long footnote shin ; Abraham
Sebi Eisenstadt, Pithey teshuba, on Yore De’a, 147 and 152,
footnote 2, where numerous references to modern decisions are to be found. On abedat ‘akum,[1]
which is not to be returned, cf. Be’er ha-gola on Hoshen Mishpaf 266,
footnote aleph : this rule
does not apply to the Gentiles of today who acknowledge the creator of the
world, etc. (cf. Joseph Karo, Beit Yosef on Fur, the same paragraph).
3. «Eternal Salvation for Christians »
Juda Hallevi, the most exclusivist among our thinkers,
wrote : « We deny to no one,
no matter to which faith community that person might belong, a reward from God
for his/her good deeds (Kuzari I, §111, Arabic text p. 62), and farther
on (111, §21, Arabic text p. 174) :
« The reward for your glorification of God will not be lost to
you. » Isaac Arama, writing in 15th
century Spain on the eve of the Expulsion, goes much further when he believes
that the term « Israel » in the sentence, « All Israel has a
part in the ‘olam ha-ba’ means the righteous from all the nations »,
unless they impute iniquity to God (‘Aqedat Yitshaq, Shemini, gateway
60).
4. Israel must be inspired by Christians and by
Muslims, etc.
Bahya Ibn Paquda justified what he took from the
non-Jewish philosphers and other ascetics from the Talmudic saying : « You have not acted like the most
righteous ‘among the non-Jews’, but you have acted like the most
depraved, » (Babli, Sanhedrin 39b) ; he could do so all the
more because the rabbis declared :
« Whoever says a wise word, even among the nations of the world, is
called Hakham (Babli, Megilla 16a) (Hobot ha-lebabot, Preface,
Arabic text p. 26, Hebrew translation, Zifroni edition, p. 20).
5. Christianity and Islam contributed towards the
improvement of humanity
Cf. Maimonides, Guide III, chapter 39, Munk
translation (into French) p. 221 :
« Today, we see most of the inhabitants of the earth glorifying
‘God’ in common accord and blessing themselves through the memory ‘that of
Abraham’… » ; Nahmanides, Torat ha-Shem temima, in Kitbey
ha-Ramban, Chavel edition, vol. I, pp. 142-144 : the peoples of today have a better moral and
religious conduct ; Commentary on the Song of Songs (attributed to
Ramban), same edition, vol. II, pp. 502-503 : all the nations acknowledge the words of the
Torah ; Ralbag, Milhamot, Leipzig edition, p. 356, and Commentary
on the Torah, Venice edition, p. 2 ; today, the Torah is spread
throughout all the nations of the world.
6. Christianity and Islam clear the way for the
Messiah
Cf. Juda Hallevi, Kuzari, IV, §23, Arabic text pp.
264-266 : « God also has a
secret plan where we are concerned, which is like the plan he has for the
seed. The latter falls to the ground and
is transformed ; in appearance, it changes into earth, water,
manure ; the observer imagines that no visible trace remains of it. But in reality, it is the seed which
transforms the earth and the water by giving them its own nature : gradually, it transforms the elements which
it makes subtle and in a sense like itself…
The shape of the first seed causes fruit to grow on the tree, which is
like the fruit from which the seed was extracted. It is like this with the religion of Moses. Although on the outside they push it away,
all the religions which appeared after it are in reality transformations of
that religion. They do nothing but clear
the way and prepare the ground for the Messiah, who is the object of our hope,
who is the fruit. » (French
translation by Touati) Cf. also
Maimonides, Mishne Tora, Hilkhot Melakhim, XI § (this text was also
censured and was reconstituted according to the manuscripts in the Bibliothèque
Nationale), which is quoted with some variants in Nahmanides, Torat ha-Shem
temima, Chavel edition I, p. 144 :
Christianity and Islam « do nothing but clear the way for the
King-Messiah and for the improvement (taqqen) of the whole world so that
it might serve God in common accord… »
For the Commission
Chief
Rabbi Charles Touati
Paris, May 23, 1973