Shmuley Boteach’s “Kosher Jesus” (Jerusalem and New York: Gefen, 2011) is a bold attempt by a person of great ability with no formal training in New Testament studies or the study of Second Temple Judaism to present a Jewish treatment of the founder of Christianity, his relationship to the Jewish people, and the narrative of his life in the Gospels. Beyond that, Boteach sets forth an entirely new and controversial paradigm for Jewish understanding of Jesus and for Jewish-Christian relations.
From the beginning, Boteach wants us to see his book as totally revolutionary. Yet parts of it are, in fact, totally unoriginal, and that those parts that are most original put forward rather questionable suggestions. One of the supposedly original theses of this volume is that Jesus can only be understood by Jews and Christians if placed in the context of Second Temple Judaism. But actually, this is an axiom of all contemporary New Testament scholarship and nothing that Boteach has just discovered.
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