Christianity grew out of Judaism. Jesus, his mother, his disciples, and the first thousand of his followers were all Jewish. The relationship is much closer than most modern people realize.
What we share
- One God — the Creator of heaven and earth.
- The Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament, with some differences about the deuterocanonical books).
- The patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob), Moses, the prophets, the Psalms.
- The Ten Commandments and the moral foundation of the Law.
- The hope of a Messiah, a kingdom of God, and a renewed creation.
- The conviction that the God of Israel is the God of all peoples.
Where we differ
- The identity of Jesus. Christians confess Jesus as Messiah (Christ), Son of God, and God incarnate. Judaism holds that the Messiah has not yet come.
- The Trinity. Christianity confesses one God in three Persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Judaism holds strict unitary monotheism.
- The New Covenant. Christianity sees the death and resurrection of Jesus as the founding of the New Covenant promised in Jeremiah 31. Judaism awaits the messianic age.
- The role of the Mosaic Law. Christianity holds that the moral core of the Law continues; the ceremonial and dietary laws were fulfilled in Christ. Observant Jews continue to keep the full Torah as covenantal life.
- Scripture. Judaism's Tanakh = Christianity's Old Testament. Christianity adds the 27 books of the New Testament.
The historical fracture
- 1st century: Christianity began as a movement within Judaism. The earliest disciples saw themselves as faithful Jews who recognized the Messiah.
- The destruction of the Second Temple (70 A.D.) and the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 A.D.) accelerated the separation of synagogue and Church.
- By the 2nd century, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism had developed as distinct (though related) faiths.
The painful history
Christians have, tragically, persecuted Jews across the centuries — forced conversions, blood libels, pogroms, expulsions, and culminating in the silence and complicity of many during the Holocaust. The Church East and West has begun, slowly, to repent of this.
Vatican II's Nostra Aetate (1965) marked a turning point. Pope John Paul II's 1998 statement formally confessed Catholic failures during the Shoah. Many Protestant and Orthodox confessions have followed. The repentance is real and must continue.
What Christians say about Judaism
Paul wrestled with this in Romans 9–11. His conclusion: God's promises to Israel are not revoked (Rom. 11:29). Israel remains the people God called by name. The mystery of how God's purposes for Israel and the Church relate is not fully resolved (Rom. 11:25–32) — Paul calls it a mystery, not a tidy formula.
The Christian hope is not that Jews must become "not Jewish"; it is that Israel and the nations come together in the Messiah.
What Jews say about Christianity
A range of views. Some Jewish thinkers (Maimonides historically; Michael Wyschogrod, Jon Levenson, and others more recently) have seen Christianity as a faithful (if partial) way for Gentiles to come to the God of Israel. Others have been more critical. Modern Jewish-Christian dialogue has been deep and respectful.
What's at stake
Is Jesus the Messiah? If yes, Christianity is the fulfillment of faithful Judaism. If no, Christianity has misread its own Scriptures. The question is not academic.
The Orthodox lens
The Orthodox Church confesses that the Old Testament is fully Christian Scripture — read in every Liturgy, prayed in every service. The Theotokos is a Jewish mother. The apostles were Jewish men. Christians are grafted into the olive tree of Israel (Rom. 11:17–24). We are not Israel's replacement; we are the Gentile branches joined to its root.
Tim Keller often observed
Christianity makes no sense without Judaism. We worship the God of Abraham, the God of Sinai, the God of David — and we confess that he came in the flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, a son of David, a son of Abraham.
A pastoral word
If you are Jewish and reading this with skepticism, the Church has hurt your people, and the right Christian response is grief and repentance. The Messiah we confess is your Messiah too. We say so with love, not triumph.
If you are a Christian and have never realized how Jewish your faith is, sit with that. The God you worship is the God of Israel. Jesus prayed the Psalms. The Last Supper was a Passover. The first Christian preachers quoted Isaiah. You are part of a story older than you knew — and a family larger than you imagined.