Unusual experiment by Jewish scholars produces New Testament

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San Francisco - Leading Jewish scholars, Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, have recently co-edited a Christian New Testament. This is considered highly unusual because the Jewish people consider the Old Testament holy, not the New Testament.
The new Bible is called "The Jewish Annotated New Testament," with the works of approximately 50 Jewish scholars used in its development, consisting of notes and explanatory essays. (New York Times)

Although major New Testament figures--Jesus and Paul, Peter and James, Jesus' mother Mary and Mary Magdalene--were Jews, living in a culture steeped in Jewish history, beliefs, and practices, there has never been an edition of the New Testament that addresses its Jewish background and the culture from which it grew--until now.
In The Jewish Annotated New Testament, eminent experts under the general editorship of Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Z. Brettler put these writings back into the context of their original authors and audiences. (Oxford University Press)

Most religious scholars agree that the Jewish people wrote the New Testament, except for Luke. The worshiped regularly and were well-versed in the Jewish scriptures, proven by their references using the Hebrew scriptures
The New Testament focused on Jewish areas of interest, strongly influenced by the Hebrew language. Jewish scholar David Flusser writes that records of the New Testament tells of Jewish life in the Hellenistic Diaspora, a movement of the Jewish culture t hat attempted to establish a "Hebraic-Jewish" religious tradition within the Jewish culture. This involvement within the New Testament tells of the spoken languages of the people, Jewish customs, their beliefs, and how they handled problems and life.
The Old Testament has always had the attention of the Jewish people, traditionally called the "Hebrew Bible" or the "Tanakh." The only thing that separates the Christian Bible from the Jewish Bible is that the Jewish people have never considered the New Testament holy, while Christians use both the Old and New Testament as holy books. Many of the Jewish people consider the Christian New Testament as hateful, anti-Semitic, and disgusting, which the Jewish authors of the newly rewritten New Testament deny.



According to Alan Segal, "Study of the New Testament, undeniably a first-century source, has proven to be quite useful for validating Mishnaic recollections of first-century Jewish life, but such comparisons are in their infancy. The New Testament is also better evidence for Hellenistic Judaism than is the Mishnak for first-century rabbinism." (Paul the Convert, by Alan F. Segal. pg xiv)



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