In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity

In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity. By Oskar Skarsaune. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2002, 455 pp., $30.00.

Skarsaune's In the Shadow of the Temple is a valuable contribution toward understanding the Jewish background to early Christianity. Skarsaune's target audience is the general reader. To reach that larger audience, he includes all original texts in English translation only, with virtually all non-English words in transliteration. He keeps footnotes to a minimum. He does not ignore scholarly debates, but treats them concisely, without trying to argue in detail his own solutions to knotty problems.

However, though not in a scholarly format, this work is not simplistic. Skarsaune's great learning is clearly seen in the use and selection of sources. His use of secondary works (both English and other European languages) indicates a broad knowledge of both older and newer scholarship. He also makes extensive use of primary sources, always with great care. For example, Skarsaune (p. 105 and n. 2) consciously avoids the error of past scholarship that sometimes used rabbinic sources uncritically by assuming that views held by rabbis after the destruction of the temple in AD 70 also represented the views of the Pharisees beforehand. Also, in contrast to some scholars who a priori assume the unreliability of certain sources (e.g. especially Josephus and the NT) or to others who demand an extreme minimalist approach to all sources, he treats all the primary sources fairly by gleaning information and fitting it together without ignoring incongruence. Skarsaune excels in reading texts sympathetically yet not naively.

The layout of the book is distinctive in its approach both at the chapter and at the book levels. Each chapter begins with a summary and concludes with a small text box called "Temple Square" in which the author pursues an item or theme from the chapter with suggestions for further reading, which often include helpful and brief annotations. At the book level, Sarsaune does not try to market another chronological treatment of intertestamental Judaism and the origins of Christianity. His work is arranged thematically and divided into four parts.

In the first part, he treats Jewish history and culture from the Maccabean Revolt up to about AD 200. In the first two chapters he weaves together his own narrative with primary sources including the key events that the non-specialist may not know, but needs to. In the next two chapters Skarsaune deals with the geopolitical aspects of Judaism, focusing on Jerusalem and its centrality for all of Judaism. Here his description of the Jewish priesthood is helpful (pp. 98-102). Chapter 5 provides an excellent survey of the Jewish factions.

The second part deals with the beginnings of Christianity during the first (chaps. 6-8) and second (chaps. 9-13) centuries. Skarsaune begins by placing Jesus within the context of Judaism. In chapters 7 and 8, Skarsaune demonstrates how the first Christians, themselves Jewish believers, understood their relationship to Judaism, the temple, and the Torah, and how this affected preaching to the Gentile believers. Skarsaune's analysis (p. 170) of the decree recorded in Acts 15 concerning prescriptions for Gentile be7lievers is illuminating. Skarsaune presents evidence that it was Jewish believers living in the land of Israel into the fourth century, who continued to be the theological teachers of the entire Church, both to Diaspora Jewish believers and then through them to God-fearer believers (chaps. 9-10). When in the second century the overwhelmingly Gentile church began to fight paganism and heresy, Skarsaune argues that the tools they used were first forged by Jews and then brought into Christianity by Jewish believers. Moreover, he argues that the major Christian heretics, the Gnostics and Marcion, seem to have been pagans who explicitly rejected Judaism (chaps. 11-12). Later the church became increasingly dominated by Gentiles from a pagan background and with little understanding of the OT and Jewish teaching. Gradually the church moved away from its Jewish roots to the point of becoming anti-Semitic.

The third part deals with Christian institutions from the perspective of Jewish influence (chaps. 14-20). These topics are major Christian themes: OT and NT canon, Christology, Pneumatology, conversion/baptism, worship/calendar, and Eucharist. Skarsaune bases the tracing of Jewish roots for each of these on careful discussions of Jewish and Christian texts.

Part 4, chapter 21, is an epilogue that places modern "philo-Semitism" in the context of the grass roots philo-Semitism that has been present at various times and places throughout Church history. Skarsaune appreciates Christianity's debt to its Jewish roots, both past and present. In fact, he closes his book with an invitation for Jewish believers to contact the Caspari Society Project, which studies the history of Jewish believers from antiquity to the present.