Recently a popular blogger — let's call him Rabbi*1 Ben — zinged the scholarship of a man we shall call Rabbi Rob. R. Ben claimed R. Rob did not "understand the difference between Judaism prior to the two Jewish wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. and later Mishnaic and Talmudic Judaism." He helpfully provided a syllabus.
最近一个人气很旺的博客写手，我们暂且叫他Rabbi Ben ，在向一个学者挑衅，这人我们称他为Rabbi Rob。R. Ben 宣称R. Rob 根本“不懂公元1和2世纪两次犹太人战争之前的犹太教和后来Mishnaic（有关塔木德经的第一部分） and Talmudic（塔木德经） 犹太教的区别。”他还提出了很有力的论证提纲。
Actually, neither man is a rabbi. (Sorry.) Ben Witherington is a Methodist New Testament scholar, and Rob Bell a rising Michigan megapastor. Yet each regards sources like the Mishnah and Rabbi Akiva as vital to understanding history's best-known Jew: Jesus.
（抱歉）其实根本没有Rabbi这个人。Ben Witherington 是卫理公会教派《新约圣经》的学者，而Rob Bell 是一名正在崛起的密歇根megapastor。他们都视 Mishnah（塔木德经的第一部分） and Rabbi Akiva*2为理解历史上最著名的犹太人：耶稣的关键。
This is seismic. For centuries, the discipline of Christian "Hebraics" consisted primarily of Christians cherry-picking Jewish texts to support the traditionally assumed contradiction between the Jews — whose alleged dry legalism contributed to their fumbling their ancient tribal covenant with God — and Jesus, who personally embodied God's new covenant of love. But today seminaries across the Christian spectrum teach, as Vanderbilt University New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine says, that "if you get the [Jewish] context wrong, you will certainly get Jesus wrong."
这种争论简直就是地震。数世纪来，“希伯来”基督教的教徒一直用基督教是从犹太典籍里摘出的这种说法来支持由来已久的犹太人和耶稣的矛盾。前者宣称不加任何渲染地墨守法规促使他们摸索到了古代部落和上帝订立的契约，而后者是上帝爱的全新契约的人性化化身。但是，今天基督教的普及教育已淡化了这些争论，就像Vanderbilt大学《新约圣经》学者Amy-Jill Levine 所言，“如果你否定（犹太）典籍，也就否定了耶稣。”
The shift came in stages: first a brute acceptance that Jesus was born a Jew and did Jewish things; then admission that he and his interpreter Paul saw themselves as Jews even while founding what became another faith; and today, recognition of what the Rev. Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus, calls Jesus' passionate dedication "to Jewish ideas of his day" on everything from ritual purity to the ideal of the kingdom of God — ideas he rewove but did not abandon.
这些转变当然是有过程的：首先要强行接受耶稣是犹太人，他过着犹太人的生活；然后承认他和传达他旨意的Paul 都视他们自己为犹太人，即便发现后来犹太人已改信它教；今天，著有《犹太人耶稣》（Rabbi Jesus）一书的Rev. Bruce Chilton说耶稣满怀热情地称赞从净化仪式到上帝的国度中所有的“他那个时代的犹太思想”，虽然耶稣将有关上帝的国度这种思想移除，但他却并没放弃。
What does this mean, practically? At times the resulting adjustment seems simple. For example, Bell thinks he knows the mysterious words Jesus wrote in the dust while defending the adulteress ("He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone," etc.). By Bell's calculation, that showdown occurred at the same time as religious Jews' yearly reading of the prophet Jeremiah's warning that "those who turn from [God] will be written in the dust because they have forsaken [him]." Thus Jesus wrote the crowd's names to warn that their lack of compassion alienated their (and his) God.
那么这到底意味着什么呢？随着时间的推移这个为结果而做的调整看来简单多了。例如，Bell 认为他理解耶稣死后为娼妇所作的辩解，（上帝对那些试图惩罚娼妇的人群说‘你们中没有罪过的人第一个向她投石头吧。’）。依照Bell的结论，就像每年犹太信徒宣读穆罕默德的《耶米利经》中的警言“那些背弃上帝的人会永载耻辱史册，因为他们已被上帝抛弃。”所以，耶稣将众人的名字写下来用以警示：正是人们缺乏同情心才会被上帝遗弃。
A trickier revision for readers involves Paul's Letter to the Romans, forever a key Christian text on sin and Christ's salvific grace. Yet this reading necessitates skipping over what seems like extraneous material in Chapters 9 through 11, which are about the Jews. Increasingly, says Jason Byassee, an editor at the Christian Century,, scholars now read Romans through those chapters, as a musing by a lifelong Jew on how God can fulfill his biblical covenant with Israel even if it does not accept His son. Byassee the theologian agrees. But as a Methodist pastor, he frets that Romans "is no longer really about Gentile Christians. How do you preach it?"
有一版包括了从《圣保罗的信》到《罗马书》在内的较严谨的修订版《圣经》被认为是基督教有关罪恶和耶稣救世荣耀的永恒对译本。但是即便是这个版本也忽略了从第11章到第9章中看似无关紧要的有关犹太人的部分。Jason Byassee说，后来有个《基督教世纪》的编辑、学者读了《罗马书》中被删掉的几章，他不解为何上帝会和以色列人以《圣经》为约，即便这个国家根本就不接受他（上帝）的儿子。Byassee这位神学家也同意此种观点。但是作为一个卫理公会派教徒，他焦虑地想《罗马书》“不再是一部有关非犹太基督徒的书，那么你该怎么和你的信众讲道呢？”
That's not a frivolous query. Ideally, the reassessment should increase both Jewish-Christian amity and gospel clarity, things that won't happen if regular Christians feel that in rediscovering Jesus the Jew, they have lost Christ. Yet Bell finds this particular genie so logically powerful that he has no wish to rebottle it. Once in, he says, "you're in deep. You're hooked. 'Cause you can't ever read it the same way again."
这可不是个无足轻重的疑虑。从理想的角度考虑，这种重新考量可以增进犹太教和基督教的友好关系，也有利于澄清《福音书》的疑点，而如果正统基督徒觉得重新发现耶稣是犹太人他们就会失去救世主，这种事也不会发生。Bell还发现这种特殊的想法如此合乎逻辑，他再也不想把他尘封起来。曾经一度，他说，你就像被扔到茫茫黑暗之中，被钩子挂起来，因为你无法再按同样的方法解读《圣经》。
译注1：该词其实是犹太学者、牧师的统称，用在这里一语双关。
译注2：Akiba ben Joseph c.A.D. 50–c.A.D. 135, Jewish Palestinian religious leader, one of the founders of rabbinic Judaism.
