The Bible, the Talmud, and the New Testament. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik

Maimonides’ “Thirteen Principles of Faith”), Soloveitchik largely deflects the issue by seeing it as Jesus’ call to the belief in the immortality of the soul, an idea that, while normative for Jews, is also not unproblematic, especially if it is presented as a substitute for resurrection.¹¹⁶ For example, in Matthew 16:21: From that time on, Yeshua began telling his disciples that he needed go to Yerushalayim and endure great suffering from the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and scholars, and that he would be killed, but would surely arise on the third day. Soloveitchik comments: “On the third day after my death. Then you will understand that the faith in the immortality of the soul that I instilled in your hearts is the truth.” Earlier in that same chapter (to Matthew 16:12), Soloveitchik claims that the Sadducees did not believe in “the immortality of the soul”—not, as is usually understood, that they did not believe in the resurrection (given the Sadducees’ Hellenistic bent, they may indeed have believed in the immortality of the soul). Resurrection is taken up in a lengthy comment that Soloveitchik makes to Matthew 22:23. It is worth citing his comment in full:

      There is no resurrection of the dead—I have already written that the foundation of the belief in the resurrection of the dead comprises two principles: the first is that the dead will rise in the time that the Creator, blessed be his name, wills it; the second is the belief in the immortality of the soul, that is, that the spirit of man does not die when it is separated from the body but that it will remain immortal and forever enjoy the pleasantness of YHWH in accordance to the good deeds that it performed in this world. Both our Jewish and Christian brothers firmly believe in these two principles, for they are united in the foundations of the religion on which the Torah of Moshe rests. Only the Sadducees turned away from the path of the Torah and the commandments and refused to believe in these two principles. Therefore, they asked Yeshua “How will it be for the dead that rise if one woman had seven husbands?”

      And in a comment to Mark 12:27, we read: “Let us repeat this, for it is an important and indisputable fact: in the dual belief of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the dead, our Israelite brothers are in perfect accord with our Christian brothers.” Finally, on Mark 8:33, Soloveitchik is the most explicit when he writes:

      There was absolutely nothing impossible about them seeing Yeshua after his death, and I cited, in the same place, that according to the Talmud, a sage distinctly revived his deceased colleague and conversed with him. Only his disciples were mistaken on the thought of Yeshua: he did not mean that he would actually resurrect physically, but that he would reappear in order to convince them, by this act, of the principle of the immortality of the soul. Read carefully my commentary in this spot, and you will then understand this passage. Petros, as well, in my opinion, was one of those who “doubted.” He believed that Yeshua spoke of a literal flesh and bone resurrection, and knowing the thing to be impossible in the temporal order, he accused him of announcing unbelievable things to them.

      On Matthew 28:17, They saw him and bowed down to him, but there were some of them whose hearts were divided, Soloveitchik cites a passage from BT Mo’ed Qaṭan 28a about R. Naḥman appearing to Raba after his death.¹¹⁷ Soloveitchik thus claims that while Jesus may have appeared to his disciples three days after his death, it does not necessarily follow that he resurrected himself but rather that he appeared to them to teach them about the centrality of the immortality of the soul. Soloveitchik thus maintains two distinct but overlapping Jewish ideas: the bodily resurrection of the dead in the future end-time; and the immortality of the souls that is always operative. Jesus comes to teach his disciples about the immortality of the soul, not about his bodily resurrection (which his disciples believed, in any case). He concludes in his comment to Mark 12:27, “Let us repeat this, for it is an important and indisputable fact: in the dual belief of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the dead, our Israelite brothers are in perfect accord with our Christian brothers.” Soloveitchik never, to my knowledge, relates to the more strident position on resurrection in Paul’s 1 Corinthians 15:12–20: But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain…. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. More generally, Soloveitchik did not write a commentary to Paul’s epistles. However, he invokes Paul frequently in his commentaries to Mark and Matthew and almost always in a positive light. While Paul is often viewed as a main source of Christianity’s anti-Judaism in both Christian and Jewish historical-critical scholarship, Soloveitchik views Paul as a Pharisee through and through.¹¹⁸

      The move to replace Jesus’ ostensible claim of bodily resurrection with the Maimonidean-infused idea of the immortality of the soul, an idea that is likely the product of medieval, not late antique, Judaism, illustrates Soloveitchik’s larger project of subverting the notion that Judaism and Christianity are categorically distinct and irreconcilable entities.

      The Jewish Jesus and Anti-Semitism: The Overt Context of R. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik’s Project

      The final theme I want to examine is less endemic to Soloveitchik’s commentary per se and more about the context (Sitz im Leben) of the project more generally. Earlier, I provided a compass to illustrate the ways in which Qol Qore may have been a response to the anti-Talmudic missionizing activity in the mid- to late nineteenth century. I say “compass” because Soloveitchik never discusses the missioning phenomenon openly; thus, even though he likely was aware of it, his intentions regarding his commentary as a response to it must remain conjecture. In terms of rising instances of anti-Semitism, however, Soloveitchik does state that be believes that his work will help resolve that age-old problem founded, in his view, on Christianity’s misunderstanding of Judaism and, just as important, its own scripture.

      Qol Qore was written at a time of rising anti-Semitism throughout Europe, pogroms, and the increasingly difficult position of Jews in their countries of residence. The deteriorating conditions of the Jews at this time helped create, among other things, Zionism, which, on Theodor Herzl’s reading, would help relieve anti-Semitism by removing a large segment of Jews from Europe.¹¹⁹ Soloveitchik was more convinced that the roots of anti-Semitism were theological and based on a misunderstanding of the New Testament by both Jews and Christians. He seemed to believe that if Jews and Christians understood the New Testament the way he did, the theological foundations of anti-Semitism would begin to wane. In a long comment to Matthew 2:1, Soloveitchik places part of the blame on the Jews, specifically in the fantastical depiction of Jesus in the anonymous medieval work Toledot Yeshu:¹²⁰ “We find that the mother of Ben Stada was Miriam, and her husband was Pappos ben Yehudah, and her lover was Pandira. Her son was a bastard, and therefore they called his mother Stada because she was a harlot. From this section in the Gemara, those who lack knowledge from among both our Jewish and Christian brothers conclude that this speaks about Yeshua, who is called ‘Messiah.’ Therefore, the Christians think badly of their Jewish brothers and speak against the Gemara without limit.” In this small excerpt of a much longer comment, Soloveitchik seeks to dispel the false Jewish notion of Jesus’ birth insinuated in the Talmud, which he believed made it impossible for Jews to take the New Testament, and thus Christians, seriously; and to serve as fodder for Christian animus toward the Jews. But his most sustained comment about the impetus for his project appears in his prefatory remarks to the 1868 London edition of Qol Qore: The Law, the Talmud, and the Gospel.

      But our object is not to comment; but impelled by circumstances of the times, so eventful in themselves, and so important in their bearing as to the cause of the Lord, we desire an institution inquiry into the cause of an existing misunderstanding. For since the fire of dispute has been kindled in the camp of our Hebrew brethren, it has divided the worshipers of God into two sections, the one Jews, and the other Christians. Does it not appear marvelous to contemplate that after the lapse of centuries, when empires have crumbled into the dust, monarchies have ceased to exist, dynasties have fallen into decay … and yet that fire of contention has not ceased, but is still raging with its primitive fury.¹²¹

      Locating the roots of Christian anti-Semitism has a long history among Jews, and Soloveitchik is certainly not the first to claim that it is rooted in theological animus initiated by Jewish and Christian scriptures. And most of his colleagues from