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Oscar Skarsaune's "In the Shadow of the Temple" is an outstanding work that demonstrates how Christianity cannot be understood without understanding the Jewish soil from which Christianity emerged. For example, in Chapter 16 - "Christology in the Making (II): The Incarnate Word" - Skarsaune takes on the popular view that the notion of Jesus as divine was a pagan intrusion into the putatively monotheistic world of Judaism. Skarsaune points out the surprising truth which is that it was the pagans who found the idea of a god really becoming a human being to be disgusting, but, to the contrary, Judaism had a long-established "Wisdom tradition" which personified the divine attribute of God's "wisdom." Consequently, according to Skarsaune, the high Christology of the Incarnation had already been developed in an inchoate state by Jewish sources for the earliest Christians to use in describing the messiah.
Skarsaune intended his book as a text book that would be accessible to the general reader. He divides his work into four sections. The first develops the cultural world of Judaism beginning in the period of the Maccabees in the Second Century BC and continuing through to the Bar Kochba revolt circa 130 AD. The second develops the emergence of Christianity out of Judaism into its historic role as a gentile church. The third looks at the persistence of Jewish ideas, tropes and practices in Christianity during the first centuries. The fourth and shortest section examines the further development of Christianity as the favored religion of the Roman Empire.
The chief virtue of Skarsaune's book is the detail it provides on innumerable subjects. It doesn't advance a single coherent argument - nor is it intended to do so. Instead it makes many arguments and inferences from Skarsaune's assessment of the data. Consequently, this review will dip into a few of the topics that Skarsaune covers.
For example, I found Skausane's description of Jerusalem as a "Temple with a City," rather than being a city with a temple, to be a fascinating and paradigm-shifting way of looking at the culture in which Jesus lived. When that relationship is understood, then the significance of money-changing, temple politics, purity rules, the number of Jewish males engaged in Temple occupations and all those journeys that Jesus made to Jerusalem become more apparent when this relationship - so very different from the church-community relationships of our world is understood.
As a Catholic, I found many of the traditions of my own faith more explicable in light of the Jewish origins of Christianity. Things like a liturgy and a liturgical calendar would have been "common sense" to the earliest Christian-Jewish believers who introduced their faith to gentiles (See p. 125.). Likewise, as Skarsaune points out, Paul's deference to the High Priest, who had a charisma of authority because of his office notwithstanding his personal failings or how he was installed in office has a resonance with the office of the papacy (See p. 99.) Skarsaune also points out that early Christians, such as Justin Martyr, did not repudiate the concept of being under God's law; Justin Martyr in his dialogue with Trypho accepted the notion that there was a moral law written in the hearts of men which continued even when the ritual laws of the Old Covenant had been ended. Other Christians spiritualized the Old Law's ritual elements, but acknowledged their continuing force in a spiritualized form. This is a far cry from a clear dichotomy between "law" and "gospel" that informs the bible reading of many modern Christians.
Likewise, Skarsaune's discussion of the incorporation of Jewish baptismal practices into Christianity tends to show that baptism for Christians was very important. Conversion to Judaism involved a ritual cleaning and a liturgical catechesis whereby the convert rejected the devil in the worship of idols. The ritual cleansing - a baptism - defined the believer's entrance into a new life after having almost literally died with respect to his old life, e.g., in Jewish tradition, the convert no longer had family obligations to his gentile family. (According to Skarsaune, so complete was this new identity that a convert could theoretically marry a member of his former family. (p. 356.)
Interestingly, Skarsaune had previously pointed out the linkage, but also the distinction, between "belief" and "confession." For example, Paul in Romans 10:9 - 11 had written:
"If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord,"
and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified,
and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved."
Skarsaune observes that "[t]he gospel message about Jesus the Messiah asks for the assent of the person addressed; this assent is made verbal in confessing with one's mouth the belief of one's heart. This may sound very "theological," but it all became very concrete when a person asks for admission to the people of the Messiah through baptism. Then it is necessary to ask the candidate the question do you (really) believe....? And the candidate has to affirm that belief." (p. 312 - 313.)
With that focus, we have to see a particular complimentarity of Romans 10:9 - 11 with I Peter 3:21 that "baptism now saves you." Were Paul and Peter referencing the importance of the ritual cleansing that they learned from Judaism in making a convert a new man? Were they tying the baptismal confession to the formal rejection of Satan and idol-worship that was found in the liturgy of conversion in Judaism? Hence, is Paul's reference to "confess and are saved" in Romans 10:9 - 11 just another way of saying "baptism now saves you," as formulated by 1 Peter 3:21? Based on Skarsaune's descriptions of Jewish practices, it seems that Paul and Peter were talking about the same thing.
In short, understanding the Jewish tradition that informed the first Christians' "concrete" understanding of baptism can make the theology of baptism much more "concrete" for modern Christians.
The resonance between Judaism, early Christianity and Catholicism may make the book challenging for modern Protestants. However, at times, it is also challenging for Catholics. For example, Skarsaune makes an argument that the Christian Church always recognized the distinction between the Jewish canon and the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament. (p. 291.) The deuterocanonical books were those book original written in Greek, canonized by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and rejected as canonical by the Protestant Reformation. Skarsaune argues that the determining factor for canonization of both the Old and New Testaments was timing, i.e., books written prior to the Hellenistic period were "canonical" for the Old Testament in the same way that books written during the Apostolic period were canonical for the New Testament. According to Skarsaune, the learned of the Church always recognized that the deuterocanonical books were problematic in some way, whereas "folk" Christianity accepted the fraudulent dating of the deuterocanonical works and therefore insisted on the inclusion of those works in the Christian canon (p.293.)
This argument seems strained. First, some of the works that were accepted in the canon were clearly not fraudulently dated. Maccabees, for example, never claimed to have been written during Skarsaune's Old Testament canonical period, but the books of Maccabees were accepted as canonical by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Second, Skarsaune points out how important books like Wisdom were to the early Christians in defining a "high Christology," which suggests that theology may have been as important a reason for canonizing the deuterocanonical books as timing. Skarsaune also points out that the chief purpose of canonization for Christians was the same as it had been for Jews - to define the scriptures that could be read during the weekly worship services (p. 294.), which suggests that the Church as a whole had accepted the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books for a long time before the Protestant Reformation.
Another area where I found Skarsaune problematic, but useful, was his description of the evolution of Christian views on the Eucharist. Skarsaune points out that the Eucharistic meal was always defined as a sacrifice, but he argues that it was intended only as a sacrifice of "first fruits," i.e., grain and wine as a sacrifice of thanksgiving (p. 420), but only later on was understood as an atoning sacrifice of Christ's body and blood. (Id.)
This is interesting, and Skarsaune's piecing together of Jewish Passover prayers, and the possible evolution of the Eucharistic prayers in the Didache and Ignatius with the Eucharistic Prayer of Hippolytus is a masterpiece of deduction, but the conclusion is problematic in its "either/or" reasoning. The Eucharist may be both a "sacrifice of thanksgiving" and a "sacrifice of atonement." Christ did say that "this is my body" and "do this in memory of me." In sharing in Christ's body, early believers undoubtedly understood that they were both expressing gratitude and sharing in Christ's atoning sacrifice at Cavalry. In a way, Skarsaune's argument seems to be based on a classic Protestant misconception of the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, which recognizes the Eucharist as both "first fruits" and Christ's body, blood, soul and divinity.
In fact, Skarsaune's argument about the Eucharist being a thanksgiving sacrifice of "first fruits" made me see the liturgy I've been going to for 50 years in a new light, particularly in the earliest portion of the Liturgy of the Eucharist - the Preparation of the Altar and the Gifts - where the priest and congregation say:
"P: Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.
C: Blessed be God forever.
P: Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.
C: Blessed be God forever."
In other words, as a Catholic, I've been affirming the earliest Christians view of the Eucharist as a "sacrifice of thanksgiving" by offering the "first fruits" for my entire life.
I've probably said that over a thousand times but never understood how deeply this prayer goes into Christian tradition, and likewise into the Judaism out of which Christianity emerged.
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