The Peoples of Israel II

A Review of Paul J. Griffiths' Israel: A Christian Grammar

In part one of this review, I detailed the argument of Griffiths’s recent book Israel: A Christian Grammar, for which I chiefly have praise and consonant support. I also, however, have some concerns at different points with method and quibbles with various conclusions. These are all offered from a more basic standpoint of agreeing with Griffiths’s fundamental thesis, and of his more provocative suggestions, such as the idea that the Synagogue stands in closer intimacy to the god of Christians than Christians do, that Christians should not proselytize Jews, and that under some circumstances the Church should accept and even encourage some Christians to become Jews. What I offer below are suggestions that I mainly think would strengthen the argument and/or provide ways forward on some of those points. For clarity, I’ve organized them numerically.

Two quick prefatory notes. First, it is clear from the Works Consulted listed at the end of the book that Griffiths has clearly read quite a bit of modern critical scholarship on Jewish and Christian origins and on modern comparative theology/theological dialogue between them. And, in fact, to flesh out my perspective on his work, I followed it up by reading Michael Kogan’s Opening the Covenant: A Jewish Theology of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), with which Griffiths is clearly engaging at a number of points, and which he lists in the Works Consulted. So, nothing I’m about to say questions his knowledge of such things: instead, my specific suggestions are typically derived from the sense that he does not always let these sources inform his method or his conclusions as much as they could or should.

Second, I also offer these comments as a Christian with close links to the Jewish community—the sort of rarity that Griffiths brings up occasionally in the book. When I was in high school, I frequented synagogues; in college and grad school, I studied Judaism and Christianity in antiquity at a high level; I read Hebrew at, I would hypothesize, a High Intermediate to Low Advanced Proficiency level at-sight, and with greater felicity when I’ve more time to devote to it; and I taught English in a Jewish Day School for two years. I occasionally grab drinks with a rabbi friend, and my spouse and I retain connections to the community that I won’t go further into, but that are regular, frequent, even daily. So I also write these from the perspective of a Christian that has, actually, had a closer, more regular relationship to the Synagogue than to the Church in any particular local iteration for four years now. My perspective on this is shaped by that unique kind and degree of liminality.