Free The Jewish Gospels by Daniel Boyarin

Foreword
    Jack Miles
    â€œD ANIEL BOYARIN,” A PROMINENT CONSERVATIVE rabbi confided to me not long ago, “is one of the two or three greatest rabbinic scholars in the world,” and—dropping his voice a notch—“possibly even the greatest.” The observation was given in confidence because, quite clearly, it troubled the rabbi to think that someone with Boyarin’s views might have truly learned Talmudic grounds for them. As a Christian, let me confide that his views can be equally troubling for Christians who appreciate the equally grounded originality of his reading of our New Testament.
    Boyarin’s is a troubling brilliance because it blurs and complicates a pair of reciprocally settled identities. His achievement is to have taken conceptual control of this reciprocity and then deployed it in a bold rereading of the rabbis and the evangelists alike, the results of which are so startling that once you—you, Jew, or you, Christian—get what he is up to, you suddenly read even the most familiar passages of your home scripture in a new light.
    I can best illustrate this point, I think, with a recent,quite personal example, but let me first set the scene with a little parable exploring what I mean by “reciprocally settled identities.” There is in our neighborhood a family with twin sons, Benjamin and Joshua. Because they are fraternal twins, not identical, they don’t look alike, and they are different in other ways as well. Ben is an athlete, a scrappy competitor who makes up in hustle whatever he may lack in raw ability. Josh is a singer-songwriter with bedroom eyes whose second love, after his current girlfriend, is his guitar. Their mother, who comes from a family of athletes, says fondly of Ben, “He’s all boy, that one.” Their father, from a family of musicians and romantics, dotes on Josh.
    Being twins, sharing a bedroom since they were toddlers, Ben and Josh know one another quite well. Ben knows—as no one else does—that Josh can beat him in one-on-one basketball. Josh knows that Ben can sing two-part harmony in a sweet tenor voice never heard outside their bedroom. But what they know about themselves has mattered less and less as time has passed and as a received version of who they are has taken hold in their extended family. Ben is the athlete and fighter, everyone in the family agrees; Josh is the singer and lover, and that’s that. By degrees, the brothers themselves have succumbed to the family definition. Ben has virtually forgotten that he, too, can sing. Josh has stopped working out and this year did not even go to the homecoming game.Reciprocally, but with family assistance, they have accepted simplified versions of themselves as their settled identities.
    As it happens, though, the twins have a favorite teacher, Mr. Boyarin, who knows them both from school and once accepted an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner at their house. After dinner, as sometimes happens on such occasions, the family album was brought out for the visitor’s edification. Mr. Boyarin, who likes both boys, noticed a fifth-grade photo of Josh—Josh, not Ben—in football equipment and asked about it. Later, he noticed a photo of Ben—Ben, not Josh—singing the national anthem at the school convocation, chosen for the honor because Mrs. Pignatelli, the music teacher, knew a great boy soprano when she heard one. The family chuckled at these completely out-of-character moments, but Mr. Boyarin took quiet note and resolved, as the opportunity may present itself, to allow what he sees as the neglected if not entirely suppressed side of each boy a little room to operate in.
    Daniel Boyarin sees Judaism and Christianity as being like Josh and Ben, not that either sports or music is at issue. At issue, rather, is the question—always consequential but perhaps never more so than after the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 C.E. —of