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Readers with a theological bent will be especially interested in Skarsaune's analysis of the differences between how the Old Roman creed and the Nicene Creed describe Christian belief in the Messiah. Skarsaune's summary: "While the Old Roman creed portrays Jesus as the Messiah doing the task predicted by the prophets, the eastern creed portrays him as a divine being becoming incarnate, as the mediator of creation who himself became man, suffered for his own creatures, and was then exalted." The first is narrative and horizontal; the second, theological and vertical.

This theology, with its emphasis on the Incarnation, is another place at which scholars wrongly assert a Hellenizing influence. That is easily dismissed, given Hellenic attitudes toward the material world. But Skarsaune goes further. He shows that the theology of the Nicene Creed is a mirror of the way the Rabbis wrote about Wisdom and Torah. Simply put, the Rabbis took what Proverbs, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon said about Wisdom's being God's firstborn, a participant in creation, and the "radiance" of God's glory, and they applied it to the Torah. The apostles took the same material and applied it to Jesus. And the Nicene Fathers simply appropriated that very Jewish mode of thought from the New Testament.

The church history of earlier textbooks often ignored the contributions of slaves, women, and populist movements. Recent volumes have begun to remedy this. Skarsaune and his New Testament colleague Reidar Hvalvik are now hoping to do the same for Jewish believers. They are collaborating on a three-volume History of Jewish Believers in Jesus from Antiquity to the Present. The first volume (antiquity to ca. 500) is due from Hendrickson in 2004. If this major history is as readable as In the Shadow of the Temple, it will be of great interest to all who seek better understanding in the body of Christ. Too often, Jewish believers in Jesus have been seen as an anomaly, with Gentile Christianity serving as the norm. This major project should help to restore the New Testament sense of the church as the place where Jews and Gentiles are fellow members of the household of God.

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Skarsaune is the chief editor of the Caspari Center's History of Jewish Believers in Jesus project.

InterVarsity Press has more information on the book, including the full text of its introduction and first chapter.

In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity is this month's selection for CT's Editor's Bookshelf. Elsewhere on our site you can:

Read an extended interview; with author Oskar Skarsaune

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October 2003, Vol. 47, No. 10