How Do Jews and Christians Read Scripture Differently? | Seth Whitaker

In this episode of The UpWords Podcast, host Jean Geran sits down with biblical scholar Seth Whitaker to explore a question at the heart of Christianity's origins: how do Jews and Christians read Scripture differently—and what holds their interpretive traditions together?

Drawing on his doctoral research at the University of St Andrews on the use of the Psalms in the book of Hebrews, Seth argues that the earliest followers of Jesus were Jews wrestling with their own religious heritage in light of the Messiah. Rather than a clean break, he traces a story of deep continuity — one in which the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the same God who raised Jesus from the dead.

Jean and Seth examine why the Old Testament can feel “more vengeful” than the New, and why that contrast is more caricature than reality. Seth offers a striking image: Scripture is not a flat plain where every verse carries equal weight, but a landscape of mountains and valleys, with high peaks of revelation — like God revealing himself as “abounding in steadfast love” at Sinai — that give us a vantage point on the harder passages.

The conversation also draws on a previous UpWords episode with AJ Levine to consider what Christians might learn from Jewish interpretive practices: the “70 faces” of Scripture, a comfort with multiple readings, and the practice of reading sacred texts in community as a guard against going off the rails. Seth closes by tracing how rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity gradually defined themselves over and against one another — shaped by events like the expulsion of Jews from Rome, the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and the Bar Kokhba revolt — and why he encourages readers to approach the Hebrew Bible less like a prophecy-fulfillment checklist and more like an ongoing dialogue.

Whether you've wondered how Christianity emerged from Judaism, struggled with the difficult passages of the Old Testament, or simply want a richer way to read sacred texts, this conversation offers thoughtful insight and plenty to ponder.

YOU WILL LEARN

• Why every New Testament author was a Jew making sense of an inherited tradition — and why that changes how we read Christian origins
• Eschatology as a central interpretive lens: how “the last things” reshaped the way early believers read their Scriptures
• The same God, not two: pushing back on the ancient Marcionite split between the God of the Old and New Testaments
• Sinai as a “mountain peak” — God's mercy to the thousandth generation versus judgment to the third and fourth
• Scripture as mountains and valleys, not a flat plain of equal-weight proof texts
• Love and judgment appear in both Testaments — including in the Psalms and in the teaching of Jesus
• The “70 faces” of Scripture and what Christians can learn from Jewish interpretation in community
• How the early church's patience, love, and care across class lines set it apart in Rome
•  Three historical turning points that drove Judaism and Christianity apart: the expulsion of Jews from Rome (49 CE), the destruction of the Temple (70 CE), and the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 CE)
• The Septuagint, Isaiah 7:14, and how competing authoritative texts shaped competing interpretations
• Reading the Hebrew Bible as a dance and dialogue rather than a prophecy-fulfillment checklist

ABOUT THE GUEST

Seth Whitaker is a New Testament scholar who completed his PhD at the University of St Andrews, where he worked with David Moffitt on the Epistle to the Hebrews. His research focuses on Christian origins and how the New Testament authors interpreted the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. His book, Eschatology and the Use of Psalms in Hebrews: Songs for the Last Days, is published by Bloomsbury T&T Clark in the Library of Second Temple Studies.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Eschatology and the Use of Psalms in Hebrews: Songs for the Last Days — Seth Whitaker (Bloomsbury T&T Clark)
• The Patient Ferment of the Early Church — Alan Kreider
• Previous episode of The UpWords Podcast with AJ Levine on Jewish and Christian readings of Scripture

CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

There is this progression, right? Of of a further revelation of God's nature and his character through Jesus, right? We as Christians we would say that God that Jesus reveals the heart of the Father. And in John's gospel, that when Jesus says that to Philip, when you have seen me, you have seen the Father. There's kind of this further insight into the identity and nature and the character of God through Jesus, but that's doesn't have to be over and against the way God is revealed in the Old Testament.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Welcome to the Upwards Podcast, where we explore the intersection of Christian faith in the academy, the church, and the marketplace. Today's conversation continues our series, highlighting speakers from Upper House's Questions of Faith event in Oshkosh. Host Gene Garrett sits down with biblical scholar Seth Whitaker to explore a fascinating question. How do Jews and Christians read Scripture differently? Drawing on his research in New Testament studies, Seth discusses the deep connections between Christianity and its Jewish roots, the role of the Psalms in shaping early Christian thought, and why Scripture may be richer and more multi-layered than many of us realize. Along the way, he and Gene examined the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, the complexities of prophecy and fulfillment, and what modern Christians can learn from Jewish traditions of interpretation and communal discernment. Whether you've wondered how Christianity emerged from Judaism, wrestled with difficult passages in scripture, or simply want a deeper understanding of how faith communities read sacred texts, this conversation offers thoughtful insights and plenty to ponder. Here's Gene Guerin with Seth Whitaker.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

So welcome, Seth Whitaker. Thanks for joining us on the Upwards Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Thank you, Gene. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

And just to give a little context for our listeners, this is another in a series that is flowing from one of our questions of faith community lectures up in Oshkosh. So thank you for being our one of our speakers in April. And how do Jews and Christians read scripture differently? So really appreciate your intervention there. And we'll we'll touch on some of those topics today.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

That sounds great.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

So I wanted to start just on a little personal side. You did your PhD from St. Andrews, correct? And you have a book out based on your dissertation. Can you tell us a little bit about that? And then also how you came to choose the topic and what you wrote on.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

So I studied at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland from 2017 to 2021. And I worked with David Moffat on the Epistle to the Hebrews. And uh after the first year of my research, I realized that I was drawn more and more into the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament, the use of the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. And I was really fascinated by how the New Testament authors were interpreting their stories and their texts. And I was drawn more specifically to the Psalms. And so the book that came out of that dissertation is called Eschatology and the Use of Psalms in Hebrews, Songs for the Last Days. I was interested in, and you can probably tell by that title of the book, that eschatology became one of the key angles for what I believe the New Testament authors to be reinforming their interpretation of scripture.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

So tell us what eschatology is.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

The shorthand of eschatology is the study of the last things. It's a really big umbrella now. There's a lot of different things that people think of with eschatology. End of the world, doomsday, kind of catastrophic events. You might think of apocalyptic movies, perhaps, you know, World War Z or I Am Legend, just some to name a few. There's so many out there, but they're popular. And so I was kind of curious, and I see that that lens being almost one of the most central lenses in the New Testament. The world is changing, the messiah is here, and that's going to change how we read our stories that we've inherited, the text that we we share with uh other Jews of the time, because all the New Testament authors are Jews, right? They're trying to make sense of their religious heritage, their identity, and now the Messiah of Israel has come, and that changes everything. So we can get into that a little bit more, I know, with Amy Jelaveen and some of what we said before, but that's that's kind of in a nutshell where I've come from. And I grew up evangelical, non-denominational, and uh was fascinated by some of the more historical Christian expressions and traditions and liturgies, as well as Jewish traditions and liturgies. And I'm really fascinated by Christian origins and how Christianity comes out of Second Temple Judaism.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Could you uh give us some of the just kind of the highlights or the main points of the talk you gave us in Ashkash, comparing how Christians and Jews read scripture differently?

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Yeah, so I started with an emphasis on continuity. Like AJ, I wanted to emphasize the things that are held in common by the first Jesus followers and their broader Jewish heritage. And so I really tried to highlight those places of continuity. I started from a point of tying in my own story, because a lot of the times our stories and why we study what we do come into play. And as a graduate student, I wasn't satisfied with many of the conventional answers that I was given to how Christianity started historically or theologically. It was all kind of a simplified black and white Christianity. It was basically birthed after the resurrection, and a new religion was started immediately, and a whole new set of a whole new institution that just kind of sprang out out of nowhere. But when I had begun to dig a little deeper, I realized there was a lot more nuance historically, and there's things that were really just on the beginning stages developmentally, theologically, it took a little bit longer to work some of those uniquenesses out, the differences and the claims of the early church. And so I started with my talk at Anoshkosh bringing in my own story and how the simplified conventional answers to Christianity weren't satisfying to me. So some of the ones that really stand out to me were that Jesus saves us from the law, he saves us from the Torah, He He keeps it so that we don't have. And it starts to build this contrast with the Old New Testament, and almost overemphasizing the contrast where we get figures like Marcion in the second, third century, where there's this the God of the Old Testament is actually different than the God of the New Testament. So why do we even need the Old Testament? We have Jesus, we have the God of Christians, and of course the church fathers rightly push back against Marcion and said, no, no, no, we need the Old Testament, we need the whole of Scripture, and it's the same God, it's not a different God. But I think that is a tendency when we start to build on these conventional contrasts, blow them out of proportion. They're not, number one, they're not accurate historically, and number two, they start to build this contrast of maybe this is a different God, maybe this is a whole different set of ideas. And and that was a question that came up in Oshkosh, was kind of bringing up this importance of the unity of the Old New Testament and especially the God of Scripture, the God of Israel. As NT Wright says really well, he says the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. And I think that's a really helpful way to put that together for those that are Christians. That there is a yes and kind of approach and not an either-or.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Yeah, and I think you um well, maybe expand a little bit because we we did have that question. And I think people people do struggle a bit with some of the hard things in the Old Testament and you know, the God that we see if you don't read, especially if you don't read it carefully, if you just read it on face value and you're not looking at, you know, what's going on in in various historical records or you know, poetry or imagery as in the Old Testament, God does come across, you know, more vengeful, more violent, or, you know, is described that way. And that's how people interpret it. Whereas, you know, we see Jesus and we think of the New Testament, and it's more an emphasis on love and hope and those things. So can you correct us a little bit more or give us a little bit more on why that separation of those two gods or how they hang together, maybe, is a better way to ask it.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

I mean, it makes sense why people would think that in the past, you know, there there is this progression, right, of a further revelation of God's nature and his character through Jesus, right? We as Christians, we would say that God that Jesus reveals the heart of the Father, and in John's gospel that you know when Jesus says that to fill up you when you have seen me, you've seen the Father. There's kind of this further insight into the identity and nature and the character of God through Jesus, but that's doesn't have to be over and against the way God is revealed in the Old Testament. I think in any case, people pick and choose cherry-picking different verses and examples. The Old Testament, I think, it needs to be said, and this people need to be reminded that there's a much greater expanse of time that's elapsed from however we want to date the first books, whether that's Job or Genesis, or the poems that are in the Hinatu the Torah. It's a composite text that's been compiled over centuries and centuries and centuries. The New Testament, on the other hand, is much more focused in a single generation almost, maybe a second generation. And so I think that's something we need to realize that too, that historically there's more genres that are in the Old Testament, the more time has elapsed. And to have a diversity of representations from different genres, you know, that that's where theology comes in to try to push things together in a way, not to force them together, but to see to authors in the Old Testament reflect on the God that they're describing in their own words and taking that as it in its own terms. But yet we need to see everything in relationship to one another. So I guess some examples for Eugene. I think I brought this up in Oshkosh at the event, was the highest revelation of God in the Old Testament is Sinai. And so Sinai is kind of this climactic theophany, this revelation of who God is. And we see that God is abounding in mercy, he's abounding in steadfast love. He visits justice on and his judgment on those two to three three and four generations. Um, but his love and mercy abounds to the thousandth generation. So there's already a built-in disparity between God's mercy, a thousand generations, and his judgment, three to four generations, right? Even there, in the, and this is kind of like the John 3.16, or like the some of the climactic places of the Old Testament, is God are revealing himself in probably the most direct way to Moses. And and I think that brings me back to another quote from Tom Wright, where the scriptures are not a flat plane. It's not just you have two, three verses showing how mean God is. Oh, I have more verses to fit my own theology. But rather, we need to understand that scripture rather is a series of mountains and valleys. And there are some dark places in scripture that are there, and it's kind of remarkable that they're retained for us to see some of the depravity of humanity and God working in really unique times. But maybe that's not the place we're gonna base our whole doctrine, our theology. It still doesn't need to be ignored or thrown out, it's important. But there are places, like I mentioned in Sinai, where they're literally a mountain, right? A mountain peak. This gives us a perspective as we look down at these other places in scripture. And I think we see this in Christian worship as well. And we get to the New Testament, we see the gospels being the highest authority, at least in the traditional Christian churches, where the gospel, where people stand for the gospel. And the gospel uh in many places was sung. There is this elevation of certain places of scripture. And so I think that can give us a vantage point over other places. That scripture is not flat. As I grew up thinking, you know, it's everything is an equal footing, but no, the Torah in the Old Testament, the first five books, that historically has had more authority for Jews and for the earliest followers of Jesus. And similarly, the New Testament, the gospels have that higher authority. And so if we see the God of Sinai, the God that's abounding in steadfast love and his mercy to the thousandth generation, we see more of a connection with Jesus. But we also can see Jesus doesn't always have very nice things to say as well. He is, he brings in judgment and condemnation, and he pulls in from Isaiah's, the end of Isaiah, this idea of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, right? He talks about hell, however, we want to picture hell. And hell and judgment is a pretty big common topic for Jesus as well. So it's not that it's just cupcakes and butterflies and just love your neighbor and kumbaya, but there are consequences. There's a deadline, there's uh accountability. So I would say that there just as we can say, we can over-emphasize the judgment of the Old Testament and the love in the New Testament, you can see the love in the Old Testament and the judgment in the New Testament just the same.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

So Yeah, that's great. And I think especially right in the Psalms, and the Psalms you mentioned, and maybe we'll talk some more about that, but they contain all of it. They're conversational with the Lord, you know, and complaining and asking for judgment, asking for judgment to come against the wicked, but then also singing praises and love and talking about God's love. The other thing that's been helpful for me in holding the tension sometimes that we get when we're reading the New Testament is to think about it as the big story. I mean, the Old Testament does, to your point, contain so much longer time, so much more time than even the gospels and then since the gospels, right? Even in our time. But thinking of it as a story of God's incredible mercy and love and his long suffering in dealing with very broken, sinful humans in over and over and over again trying to call them back to what he created them to be. And so I think that story, you're always gonna have mountaintops in any relationship. You're gonna have mountaintops and valleys and go through dark times. We understand that. And I think that's what he's doing with his people, Israel, in the Old Testament. And then for we believe us now, grafted in in the New Testament. We teach a student fellows track and we call it the drama of scripture, right? And I love that because it really is a drama. I think you mentioned as well in your talk, and also maybe in your book, there's some ambiguity in the Psalms that do open us to or lend themselves to multiple interpretations, even just on face value. And we talked a little bit about that with AJ as well on the podcast and at the event, AJ Levine. And she emphasized the the really like Jews tend to be very comfortable with many different different interpretations of the exact same scripture. And that's actually part of how they learn from each other and they continue to reinterpret. Rabbis continue to reinterpret. Correct me if I'm saying this wrong, but that was my understanding was you know, very comfortable with different interpretations. That's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to think deeply about these things. And she said that her check in not going off the rails, I believe, is how she put it, is to read it in community, to keep reading the scriptures that we love and seeking after the Lord in community together. Is there something that we Christians, I think, I feel like maybe we can learn a little bit from that. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Yeah, AJ pulls from this principle in rabbinic Judaism that speaks of the 70 facets of scripture, the 70 faces, the because scripture is divine speech, and I think that's an important hermeneutical presupposition that scripture itself is living and active and dynamic, and it's the very speech of God. And because that is the case, if we limit scripture to one meaning, we might be missing something. We actually might be doing scripture a disservice and limiting the voice of God to speak to us. And so, of course, scripture is you know a double-edged sword, right? We it doesn't just mean whatever we want it to say, and that's where the community aspect comes in. And I we see this in the New Testament, right, at Acts 15 at the Jerusalem Council, that as you have this great influx of non-Jews into uh this community of faith around the Jewish Messiah, it's like, okay, well, how is this supposed to work with these non-Jews? They should probably go through the same conversion uh or be part of the Jewish community in this way to worship the Jewish Messiah. But the apostles who have received the authority from Jesus, they they say this interesting phrase, right? James being the leader in Jerusalem, that it seemed right to the Holy Spirit and to us, right? It seemed right, right? There is this discernment in community that the apostles are trying to address a new situation, a new problem. And they go to Scripture, but they also have an authority and the presence of the Holy Spirit, but it's not an isolated individual, top-down. Someone gets to decide. There is this communal discernment. And I think that may be a good example for you. We can definitely learn from that. Like, and this is one thing I try to pull out in my book, and also just teaching in general about how we can better appreciate the Old Testament Hebrew Bible, is that scripture doesn't have this monovalent, this singular, unilateral kind of meaning and purpose, but we see in the New Testament some examples where the same passage can mean multiple different things. And that one of my primary examples was Psalm 2. Um, but I think Christians have examples of a multivalence and a you know, maybe not the same as as later rabbinic Judaism, but we see uh a shared approach to scripture in the New Testament that would have been familiar and common to other Second Temple Jews, and that was a rereading of the authoritative divine speech of Scripture into the present moment, and that's where eschatology comes into play, right? We see Scripture being reinterpreted after the exile in Babylon. We see the identity of the Jewish people changing without a temple, rereading texts, especially Daniel, reinterpreting Daniel. When when was this supposed to happen? And so there's this hyper scribal activity of prophecy and interpretation, and but a lot of it's under the the thumb of the different empires that had taken over. So people are oppressed, they're suffering, they're looking for help. And scripture is is their one of their primary places to go for the consolation and for hope and for the future of redemption. And so we see that scripture interpretation is not given to us in a vacuum, but a lot of the times it has to do with a time of persecution and a time of division, turmoil. We see a lot of division in the New Testament between those that believe that Jesus is the Messiah and those that don't. But Christians do have some examples in the New Testament where scripture has been reinterpreted and it's saying multiple things. And so I'll jump into the key example I use, and that's Psalm 2. Now, Psalms are the most quoted Old Testament book in the New Testament. Isaiah is number two, and I grew up thinking, oh, the Psalms, that's that's just the poetry, you know, it's not the law, it's not the most important. But in the late Second Temple period, in this time of transition and rebuilding of the temple and the wars and battles that happened with Rome, with Greece, and there's times of independence with the Hasmonean dynasty in the early second century BCE. Uh, then Rome takes over in 63. And so we see that some of the poetry actually becomes prophetic. And so there are many people that have written on how poetry becomes prophetic in the late Second Temple period with the Qumran scrolls. Uh but New Testament and Qumran, they have a lot of corroborative things to say about how the Psalms become prophetic and it can be interpreted. And you mentioned earlier this idea of ambiguity, and there is an ambiguity in many of the psalms that lends themselves to reinterpretation because there's not a clear referent in the text. So of course, people can jump into that and say, oh, maybe this is Jesus, maybe this is the Messiah, maybe this is something, and from reinterpret it. Okay, so Psalm 2, Psalm 2, 7 in particular, let me just read it straight up from the scriptures, right? This is a decree of the Lord. He said to me, You are my son, today I have begotten you. Okay. What do we think of if we read the New Testament? The first thing it's probably Jesus' baptism, right? This is in all the three synoptic gospels in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The wording is slightly different in Matthew. But we see this phrase, you are my son. And it's a quotation. Most people agree. This is Psalm 2.7. This is Psalm 2. And Psalm 2 has other messianic overtones. It has the word Messiah in it, Psalm 2, that the Lord's anointed, he's anticipating a dealing of judgment to the nations. So Psalm 2 already has some expectations, some messianic expectations in it. And then Psalm 2.7 says that you are my son. Today I've begotten you. Well, who is you? You know, who is who is this person? Is this David? You know, is this someone after David? And so the New Testament authors say, this is obviously Jesus, right? This is Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. So the point I want to make here is that's kind of the most common, right? We think, you are my son, Jesus is God's son, son of God, baptism, start of the ministry of Jesus, boom. Okay, great. We're done with Psalm 2. It meant one thing. It meant Jesus and his baptism. He's a son of God. Okay, we're done with that one. We can check it off the list. It's finished, it's completed, it's fulfilled. No, actually, we move on. There's two other places in the New Testament that the authors interpret Psalm 2.7 differently. And so if we move to Acts 13, Luke and Acts are connected. They're sequels that are the same. Most people would agree they're the same author. So Luke has just said in his his version of the baptism, Psalm 2.7, Jesus, you are my son, today I've begotten you. Well, in Acts 13, Paul is preaching at the synagogue in Antioch. And he he gets up and he tells a great, kind of a great history from the beginning to Jesus, how we get to Jesus, right? And he's giving this audience at the synagogue kind of a full picture of how we get to Jesus. And he g he quotes Psalm 27. And so I'll read I'll read here in Acts 13, starting in verse 30, Paul says this God raised Jesus from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they are now his witnesses to the people. And we bring you the good news that what God proclaimed to our ancestors, he has fulfilled for us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, you are my son, today I have begotten you. So here, the author of Luke Acts is saying, Psalm 2.7 is actually not about Jesus' baptism, it's about his resurrection. Wait, what is it? I thought that we fulfilled that Psalm already. I thought that prophecy has already been fulfilled. But already in the New Testament, we have Psalm 2.7 being appealed to to support Jesus' baptism, and now in Acts 13, it's being appealed to to support Jesus' resurrection. So I'll raise you the third and final New Testament example is Hebrews. So the book that I focused on is Hebrews, and Hebrews 5 takes another shot at Psalm 2, and Hebrews 5.5 says this. So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, You are my son, today I have begotten you. Okay, so now the author of Hebrews is saying Psalm 2.7 is not about Jesus' baptism, it's not about his resurrection, it's actually about his ascension and his has to do with his office of his high priesthood, which by the way, Hebrews is the only book in the New Testament that explicitly identifies Jesus as a priest. And so we see three different examples, and there's maybe a good overlapping with what AJ would talk about in some, it's more common in Jewish circles, right? To have multiple interpretations. It's more built into that tradition, but I like to find places where we see that in Christianity, where the authors of the New Testament are having a dialogical relationship to their scriptures, and they're going back and forth. They're not trying to complete something to finish it to move on. They're going back and forth. They're seeing the more light and insight from these scriptures and especially from the Psalms.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

They're not doing it just flippantly either. I mean, you know, some the pushback would be, oh, well, then it can mean anything to anybody, but that's not what we're saying, or that's not what they believe. Like they took great care to try to really understand the depth of what God was saying throughout.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Yeah, absolutely. And that is the tricky part on the other side is how do we prevent people from maybe taking advantage and saying scripture can mean anything they want. And we mentioned earlier the appeal to community. There's a shared authority that one person doesn't have on their own. I think that's important, but it's not an easy thing to mitigate against some of that. It does open up to some of those things. The one thing I try to pull out in my book, and I maybe in the talk a little bit, Noshkosh, at least in this time period, there's a tethering to certain presuppositions, what scripture can and can't do. And so maybe an example while we're in Hebrews is that when Hebrews interprets the other very popular psalm, with Psalm 110, it doesn't change the words to fit its theology. It doesn't say you are a high priest in the order of Melchizedek. It doesn't say you are a high priest. The text just says you're a priest. So the author has to do a separate interpretive move that's not found in Scripture to move from a priest to a high priest. And you would think, why didn't he just say that the Psalm says it's a high priest? So there seems to be a respect for the words, the very words of scripture that can't be changed. That if you're going to reinterpret something, it has to be in a gap. It has to be something that's you're not contradicting what's already there, but if there's a gap, it feels like by all means there's a place to fill that gap. One of the gaps that we see in Hebrews is uh this idea of priesthood. Okay, if we have this heavenly high priest, how does that relate to the earthly priests, the Levitical priest in the temple? Well, Hebrews says this, I think it's in chapter 8, says if if Jesus was on earth, he wouldn't be a priest at all. So there's almost this respect of the earthly sphere and realm and say those priests did the earthly thing, Jesus is doing the heavenly thing. And so in some ways, they have different jurisdictions, different authorities, and it's Jesus' priesthood is not necessarily in competition with the Levitical priests. And I know that's a can of worms, uh, but that's where I've kind of come to say the author, Hebrews, and I believe many of the other New Testament authors are respecting the very words of scripture. They're tethered to a tradition that I think today we don't really have that. We have we have, at least for us from Protestant traditions, right? It's me and my Bible. I have my own Bible, I can interpret any way I want. And we need to be, I think, more to resist the temptation to move forward and kind of pump the brakes, I think, is we have almost a hyper-individual culture and and religious faith expression today that wouldn't have been the same as it was in the New Testament times.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

So we excel at the cherry picking because we're we're not steeped in memory and the tradition of the Jewish people, that was the center, like you said, Sinai and Moses, like they remember. I talked a little bit with AJ about this, that Jews tend to think and remember and reinterpret and re just remember. And we Christians, we tend to be more on the eschatology, right? She said they're not as much into it as we are, you know, but thinking more linear for the future and that sort of thing. So I think each culture, each generation has its own temptations toward misuse or misreading of scripture, but also gifts in how to understand more about scripture, right? And that's what we can learn from each other.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

You're listening to the Upwards Podcast, where we bring you conversations that explore faith, scholarship, culture, and the questions that shape how we live. If you're enjoying today's episode, take a moment to subscribe so you don't miss future conversations. We regularly feature authors, scholars, pastors, and thought leaders who help us think more deeply about the intersection of faith and everyday life. Now, let's return to Gene Garrin's conversation with Seth Whittaker.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

I just wanted to make a quick comment because when you read that Psalm 2 for the first time, for me, I actually went, you know, the son who's who I've begotten, I went to the Nicene Creed. You know, because we we say beg, and that's kind of one of the only places we use the word begotten right in it when we we read it out in my Anglican tradition. So I'm wondering what you think about sort of non-scriptural or church tradition elements of where scripture fits.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

The Nicene Creed is really really important for many, many Christian communities. I think for all Christian communities, you have to do something with the Nicene Creed because of how influential and authoritative it's been historically, and it stood the test of time. Now it has these phrases in the Nicene Creed. You mentioned the word begotten, right? Begotten, not made, right? There's a distinction of the relationship of Jesus as a second person of the Trinity to the Father that's really hashed out, right? You can kind of get a glimpse of what's happening behind the scenes. You know, you go, we believe in God the Father, yeah, creator in the earth, heaven and earth, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Jesus has like most of the creed is like, well, who is Jesus? How is he, is he divine? Is he human? Yes. You know, there's a spelling out of that more specifically. But later, right, or towards the end of the bit on Jesus, before we get to the Holy Spirit, the Nicene Creed says that Jesus has been raised from the dead according to the scriptures, right? On the third day, according to scriptures. So that phrase, people have really thought, well, well, where does it say Jesus is going to be raised from the dead in three days? You know, you really have to do some digging and some maybe some creative stretching of different texts. And I think that phrase in the Nicene Creed, as general as it is, there's a lot that's packed into that, right? It's kind of this charged phrase. Because they were still figuring out how did Jesus fulfill, right? How was it according to scriptures? What do we mean by fulfilled? What do we mean by according to? You know, is there a spectrum? Is it a black and white plug and play? You know, is it a one-on-one direct correspondence? I want to say no, no, it's not a this direct one-to-one kind of correspondence that we might like to check off the list. There is this, as I mentioned earlier, this dynamic, dialogical working and reworking and being tethered to the words of scripture, not trying to change them, but seeing in the gaps and seeing the maybe a fuller sense interpreting, a fuller meaning or another meaning. And I think maybe that's where Christians have gone, maybe can get off the rails sometimes is we chase that rabbit, right? We we go down that hole and we just never come back. We're not as tethered, I think, as our former generations. But that phrase I think is really helpful. And we start to see theology that's developed, the Nicene Kree is really important in the fourth century and some other church fathers, hashing out what does it mean to fulfill scripture? And we're still wrestling with that today.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

So, speaking of that tradition that flowed, I'm I'm interested. Let's go back to the early church. You mentioned it early on of when back when the time, because I think it's maybe a little bit of a mind exercise, but I'd love for you to do it. Thinking about early Christians who came out who were Jews for the most part, until you know we started Paul with started adding Gentiles in to the early church, but there was even a gap between when Jesus lived and the gospels were written, right? So there was that whole period. There was lots of changes. I mean, this happened over time. It wasn't like black and white. Okay, now we now we're called Christians, even, right? Like now, now we start this way instead of our Jewish traditions. Give us some sense of how you think that that time or those periods unfolded and how the eventual then more stark differences kind of came about. Was it through traditions of the church, like the Nicene Creed, or how did that happen? I think, you know, AJ mentioned that too a little bit in her talk that it wasn't just like a once and done split. It was an evolving of two communities and then multiple communities, even within those two Christian and Jewish traditions, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:53

So Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

What are your thoughts on that, on that time period?

SPEAKER_01 34:58

I mean, that's a brilliant question. And it's a question that we've asked a lot and we continue to ask because it's a good question, and because there's not an easy and there's not a simple solution. There's not a simple answer. I really wanted to jump in when I started studying in St. Andrews, I really wanted to address kind of what you're you're uh working at or you're talking about, this idea of supersessionism, right? This when did this this idea of this new religion kind of coming out and on top of this old religion? It kind of ties into what I was saying earlier for my own dissatisfaction with the answers I was given. And when you look at the New Testament, you realize this is a Jewish sect, right? This is a messianic sect of Judaism that's saying, hey, we found the Messiah, but we gotta tell you, he's not what we expected. He's actually rose from the dead, he died, right? He was crucified, he was sentenced to execution by the state, and now he's our heavenly high priest. Wait, what? That's not really gonna be that encouraging to many people if they're still under the thumb of Rome. It's like, okay, but what about being delivered from Rome? What about the Messianic era? What about God delivering and saving his people? This idea of salvation was really tied to this worldly deliverance from oppressors. Like, that's a lot of the historical understanding of what we mean by salvation is really about deliverance from this worldly persecution and oppression. And of course, it's been spiritualized later, but you can under you can empathize with the early Jewish recipients that didn't meet Jesus and that had a hard time believing this. Okay, so what does that mean for them now? They're supposed to just believe in this guy and hope he comes back soon. But what about all the other things that they're doing, right? Is Rome going to continue to persecute them, maybe even more? Right? Because now that's a threat to Caesar, right? Jesus is Lord, that's a big statement in a place where you're in a tol you're a tolerated religious minority, and now you're claiming you have a king, your own kind of king. So that's kind of an issue there. If we're not really ready for this Messiah and this new Messiah figure that we didn't expect, you can tell it would be a hard pill to swallow for some people. But the power that was given through the Holy Spirit for those that did believe and that saw their lives transformed, of course, we see there's this powerful community that's forming, and especially the revelation of Jesus physically to his followers and to 500 people. 1 Corinthians 15 talks about how Jesus revealed himself not just to his own 12 followers, but to 500 at once. And so there was, if we take the record, for us as Christians, we take that record seriously and accurately that there was a physical resurrection that's important, and that Jesus was revealed to 500 people at one time. That's a pretty big claim and it had a lot of repercussions. Now, let me try to get back to your original question. And I apologize for getting off track a little bit, Gene. But with supersessionism, we might think when we read the earliest church that, great, well, Jesus died in Jerusalem. Let's go to all the ends of the earth, right? Well, not quite yet, right? All the followers of Jesus relocate to Jerusalem. They're Galileans, and they treated Jerusalem carefully with Jesus. They came there in specific times for the feasts, the Jewish festivals, three times a year. But now they're relocating. That's kind of a dangerous thing to do, but they anticipated, right? They knew that the temple had a place. They knew that Jesus was coming back and the Mount of Olives, the cross in the temple. And so they relocated to Jerusalem, and there were priests that became believers. In the sixth chapter of Acts, it says that there are priests that became obedient to the faith. And it's kind of this passing comment. Like, oh yeah, there were some priests that were doing their priestly thing in the temple and they believed in Jesus. What did that mean? Like, I wish there was a little bit more spelled out there, right? But historically there wouldn't have been any, they wouldn't have stopped their day job, right? It's not like they had a choice. That was part of their lineage, their history. But now they had a meaningful way of doing their role with the Messiah in mind. But for them, it most likely wouldn't have conflicted with their priestly roles. But for us as modern-day Christians, we might think, how could that be even be compatible? How could you be a priest in the temple, believe in Jesus, and continue going to the temple? But we know that Paul went to the temple, that he participates in different rituals, right? There's circumcision. The earliest Christian communities are still participating in temple rituals. They didn't quite get this difference that we would assume. It took many years. So these bigger moments are important, or AD 70, right? The destruction of the temple, the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. To me, it changed everything and it was really traumatic, not just for non-believing Jews, but for the believing Jews. I think that this is where the epistle to the Hebrews probably has a place in that historical context. Now we we have a heavenly high priest. This would have been an important message for those that were relying on an earthly priest, and now they're in this identity crisis. What do we do now? So the temple to me, the destruction, to me, that is a really important place marker to look back at the Gospels, right? There's this milestone where Paul's writing the 50s and 60s. Uh his is the earliest documents in the text of the New Testament. The Gospels, it took a couple generations. You know, perhaps, you know, they thought Jesus was coming back very soon, right? And we know we have that is a problem for many of the earliest believers. Why do we need to write stuff down if he's coming back very soon? And so eventually they thought, okay, well, we should probably write some of this down.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

There's also an element you mentioned the early Roman church or the Roman Empire, right? But we had churches there. And it struck me that the faith grew in part, yes, out of scripture, but then the temple destroyed. Then we have this understanding, a deeper understanding of the gospels that Jesus is our high priest and that we don't need the physical temple anymore. But then what seemed to characterize the church in Rome was how they did live in community, not how Jesus fulfilled scripture or how they read scripture, although that was hugely important. But what set them apart was by the power of the Holy Spirit, the way they they loved and they cared for each other. And that was part of this new religion, right? That was growing was the ethos that they lived by in following Jesus and believing that Jesus was the Messiah and died for them.

SPEAKER_01 41:55

What you say, Gene, reminds me of a really excellent book, one of my favorite books on the early church. It's called The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. It does talk about some of these communities in Rome in particular and other places, but these different theological treatises of patience as being the chief virtue that God has been patient with us. Therefore, we are to be patient with everyone else. And to reflect God's patience, his mercy, the things that go along with that patience, right? There is this parental love and patience and hope and expectation that your child will grow and develop and mature and change. And this community has experienced that radical patience and their way of their living, their habitus, as the book talks about, this habit, this culture almost of living is counter-cultural. It's transformative because you're living beyond your own human ability to be patient with people, and you're extending divine generosity and gratitude. And because you have experienced something, there's an experiential bit to it, um, and a spiritual bit to it that people could see that, wow, this is not normal, this is a little bit abnormal, this is divine and supernatural in some ways. And of course, there's there's miracles, there's healings, there's other things happening too that that kind of support that. And it was across different economic classes as well that kind of brought folks together in some of these early communities where when I wasn't quite sure who these new quasi-Jewish messianic people were, were they a part of the Jewish community? Could they be tolerated until Rome? Or if the Jewish community is not accepting them as one of their own, would they be persecuted? And so that was a tension in the society, right? And we see that you know, here's an example too, with the expulsion of Jews from Rome in 49 CE. And so you have almost a vacuum. So people might play on that expulsion, the Claudia's expulsion as a vacuum that was. Filled by some of these messianic groups, that maybe they got to be a part of that. There may be that they weren't accepted, right? And so that was that I would say the expulsion of Jews in Rome under Claudia, the destruction of the temple in 70. And then the next one I would say was the Barkla revolt in 135 BC. And AJ would actually put more emphasis on that as a distinguishing factor for the community that are believing in Jesus as a Messiah and those that are not. Because that's where it became really clear. There's this another Messiah. This Barkokla, his image was put on Son of the Star, right? His image was put on coins, and he was supposed to usher in the Messianic age. And the famous rabbi Akiva even agreed, yep, he's got my stamp of approval. This is the Messiah.

SPEAKER_02 44:51

Was this before Jesus or after?

SPEAKER_01 44:53

After Jesus. So 135. So this is 135 CE. And you can see the natural tension, right? You can try to stay with your brothers and sisters that don't believe in the Messiah. You can still go to synagogue. You can still try to convince them and live together and reflect God's love and try to work it out. But as soon as this non-believing part of your tradition says, hey, we actually found there's another Messiah, and he's going to deliver us from Rome, then you can see it's definitely one of the most important splits when it becomes a political, when there's political repercussions, right? And societal repercussions. So that's another one I would say too. But AJ, you know, we had a good conversation when she was here in Oshkosh, but she doesn't put as much emphasis on the destruction of the Jerusalem temple as I would. I think it's much more significant than she lets on. And that might be something for our future conversations. But I think that is what we see when we read the gospels. We're anticipating a time when Jerusalem is surrounded by armies, right? We're expecting this time. I think everything is pointing to the destruction of the temple. Hebrews is reflecting that. And what do you do without a temple? And I think even the earliest, what we call Christians, would be traumatized by the center of their own religious heritage is now decimated. But maybe that's another conversation we can have. Those are some of the probably the three big historical events that I think are important. But you can see how the historical events would directly impact the religious communities on how we can live together and who's allowed to be tolerated under Rome. And if there's another Messiah that comes up, sorry, but we believe Jesus is the Messiah, so that's gonna start to break apart. And so after that, the second century gets a lot more, uh, there's a lot more hostility, but both what would become rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity, they start to define themselves over and against one another. And so there are more traditions and theologies and doctrine on both sides. Here's one example, too, then I'll I'll stop talking. But with the authoritative text, you have the Greek text, Septuagin. That was an authoritative text for the Jews of Alexandria, and it had this miraculous backstory of how it came about. But very quickly, that Greek translation of the Torah and then the rest of the Old Testament was kind of ditched. That's the Christian's Bible, because you see more of the interpretations in the New Testament were dependent on the Septuagint. And the maybe the most famous one is Isaiah 7.14, this idea of this virgin giving birth, this virgin birth. In the Hebrew text, the Hebrew words Almat, it's more of just kind of a generic young woman, but the Greek is a little bit more specific and could imply a virgin. And you can see that the Jewish community is saying, okay, we're gonna stick to the this is our Hebrew tradition, the Hebrew language is much more important than Greek. And the these other interpretations, these messianic interpretations, they seem to be really problematic for us, and they're tied to that Greek text. Let's let's let those Jesus followers have the Greek text. So that became one of the things is if you have an authoritative text that limits your interpretation, you're not gonna necessarily get to those same points of conflict. So if you're reading different texts, then it solves some problems if you're trying to retain your own community.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

Well, thank you so much, Seth. That was great. You wrapped it up well there. Really appreciate you expanding our understanding of how Jews and Christians do see prophecy, see scripture, understand these things different, and then how we grew eventually into two separate, but still very, very much linked religious traditions. So I want to thank you for joining us. And then I wanted to give you the last word.

SPEAKER_01 48:52

Great. Thank you again, Gene, for having me. And I hope for our listeners, based on our conversation, that you know, we can see how beautifully complex and nuanced some of these topics are and these questions that I would challenge people if you have an overly simplified answer, many times it's probably not the most accurate one, but to wrestle with the tensions, and you'll probably get a more accurate picture historically and also just who of who God is and how he reveals himself to us through scripture. But my final word, so to speak, uh would be to encourage people when you're reading the Old Testament Hebrew Bible, to not see it as a unilateral one-direction prophecy fulfillment kind of check mark list, but rather to see it as a dance or a dialogue that requires the accountability of community and tradition, but it is something that we're returning back to constantly. We're not just solely moving forward to support what we already think, but we're deferring back to scripture. We're letting scripture interpret scripture, and we're trying to be sensitive to the tradition that we've received, that scripture has so many things to say that God is speaking through his word, but let us not saw off the branches and complete what's come before us, but let us return to it and to see more depth and more beauty of how God is speaking to us today.

SPEAKER_02 50:20

Beautiful. Thanks again, Seth.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

Thank you, Gene. As Gene and Seth have highlighted in this conversation, scripture isn't simply a puzzle to solve, it's a living dialogue that invites us back again and again to discover new depth, insight, and beauty. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to share it with someone who would benefit from the conversation. Find more episodes and our other podcast offerings at slbf.org slash studio. Until next time, keep looking upward and living with purpose. Go in peace.