Happy Birthday, Caspari!
This year Caspari Center is celebrating a major milestone in its development; we are twenty years old. In human terms that means we are leaving adolescence and approaching adulthood.
Caspari Center for Biblical and Jewish Studies is coming of age. Despite the stressful climate of Jerusalem, the Center is poised and ready to grow to meet the increasing challenges facing the Messianic community in Israel. In a season of change and transition we are seeking to expand and even increase our activities. To do this well has demanded vision and flexibility from Caspari's staff and supporters.
If you have been following these newsletters during the past year you will be aware of some of the changes and new activities in which we are currently engaged. This newsletter will be devoted to giving you a brief survey of the past twenty years, including the most significant developments of the past six months. We do this with an eye to what the changes and developments will mean for the future of the Caspari ministry.
Caspari was founded 20 years ago by a visionary Norwegian pastor who saw the need to provide high-level academic and theological education in Hebrew for the then fledgling Messianic community in Israel. Ole Christian Kvarme, today a bishop in the Lutheran Church in Norway, could be called the 'father' of the Caspari Center. In many ways, his vision has been realized. Hundreds of individuals in Israel's Messianic community have benefited from Caspari's wide variety of programs.
Since its inception, Caspari Center has had a policy of joint cooperation between Jews and non-Jews. This reflects our commitment to the theological understanding that in Messiah, Jew and Gentile become one. Caspari has always had a Norwegian director and since a large portion of our support comes from that country, this has been seen as natural. Now that Caspari is twenty years old it is time to begin, as it were, to leave home. While Caspari will continue to function with a mixed staff of Jewish believers and Christians from the nations; from the beginning of July, we have an Israeli Jewish believer as director.
The current director, Torkild Masvie, is relocating to the United States and will become the International Director/CEO of Caspari International. Lisa Loden, who has been involved with Caspari Center for over fifteen years and is currently the Director of Local Programs, will assume the role of Managing Director of Caspari's Jerusalem office. This development has received the blessing of all Caspari's supporting partners. More than that, it is seen to be a significant step in the ongoing development of Caspari's ministry to the Messianic community in Israel. With an Israeli director, greater opportunities for service will be available to us.
We are excited as we look to the future. In a time when so many organizations in Israel are downsizing or even disappearing, we are not only able to continue but to move ahead into new areas of ministry. Although this is a time of insecurity and uncertainty for Israel, Caspari's work is as important today as it was twenty years ago. The growing number of Messianic believers in Israel need the kinds of programs Caspari can offer. We have never had a more promising future.
A New Take on NT Backgrounds
One of the things that keeps editors intrigued with publishing is the surfacing of manuscripts that promise to change the way we view important issues. A couple of years ago Oskar Skarsaune, professor of church history at the Norwegian Lutheran School of Theology in Oslo, Norway, sent us one of those. As IVP editor Dan Reid read the manuscript, he was increasingly impressed and excited by what he found. In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity is a book not to be missed by students and teachers of the New Testament, Christian origins and early church history (see the endorsements that follow). We hope the following interview with the author will give you a few hints why.
REID: Some may assume that In the Shadow of the Temple is just one more book on the Jewish background of Christianity. But you have a new perspective to offer. How would you summarize the thesis of your book?
SKARSAUNE: It is commonly assumed that Christianity originated in a Jewish setting, but that "the parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity occurred very early. And [it is also assumed] that, let's say, from the beginning of the second century, there was no more fruitful interaction between the two. Like some other scholars recently, I challenge that picture. I think the interaction continued all through the pre-Constantinian period and even beyond.
REID: What do you think is the strongest evidence against this notion of an early parting of the ways?
SKARSAUNE: There are traces of live interaction between church fathers and Jews not only in the dialogue-type of writings, but also in part of the non-polemical exegetical writings of the fathers- in Origin, for example, in the middle of the third century. With this point of view, I now find myself in good company. A colloquium at Princeton in January 2002 has the overarching theme "The Ways that Never Parted." There may now even be a tendency to overstate this new perspective. Scholarly speaking these are interesting times indeed.
REID: Why do you suppose we have learned so little about this early Jewish-Christian conversation in our customary accounts of Christian origins and the history of the early church?
SKARSAUNE: Simply because most textbooks are written on the assumption that no such interaction occurred after, let's say, A.D. 70 or A.D. 135 at most. This means, for example, that all literary "dialogues" between Jews and Christians written after this period are considered purely literary exercises with no basis in an ongoing dialogue in real life. I used to share this view, but intensive work with part of this dialogue literature has convinced me of the opposite.
REID: How did this book begin for you? Was there anything in particular that led you down this research trail?
SKARSAUNE: My work on the book began, in fact, in 1983, during a seven-month stay in Jerusalem. I believe it was the Jerusalem setting - including the input from scholars at Hebrew University in Jerusalem - that triggered the whole thing plus the fact that I originally wrote for an audience of Jewish believers in Jesus; that makes you approach the New Testament and early church history from another angle than the common one.
REID: One aspect of your book that first interested me is its time frame - basically, from the Maccabees to Constantine. You bridge at least two scholarly specialties: the New Testament and its background, and the history of the post-apostolic early church. As an early church historian, is there anything you would like New Testament scholars and students to learn from this?
SKARSAUNE: In the good old days the leading New Testament scholars were often also great patristic scholars. If, in addition, they were at least a little competent in Second Temple Judaism and rabbinics, they were the greatest New Testament scholars around, in my view. It all has to do with seeing the New Testament in its most relevant context, and Nachgeschichte - the "history afterward"- belongs to that context. In much New Testament research, the time perspective is limited to the first century A.D. It may be too narrow. I think it is.
REID: There does seems to be an ever increasing interest in the subject of Judaism and Christianity today, don't you think?
SKARSAUNE: Yes, no doubt. It took quite some time before academic theology began working on the heavy theological questions that remained in the wake after the Holocaust. But once begun, this quest for the origins and background of Christian anti-Judaism has become increasingly important in all disciplines of theology, not least within historical theology of the New Testament and the early church period. In addition, there has been a remarkable shift of paradigms within scholarly work on Second Temple Judaism. This too has fertilized much scholarly work on Jewish-Christian relations in general.
REID: Occasionally, as I have been teaching the New Testament and describing in some detail the Old Testament or Jewish background of something that, say, Paul or Mark has written, a student has asked, "How could Paul have ever expected his audience to have understood that?" A good question. How would you answer it?
SKARSAUNE: I believe the explanation lies with the kind of people Paul and other early missionaries addressed when they turned from the Jews to the Gentiles, as indicated in Acts 13:46. Their primary target group among the Gentiles were people who had already visited the synagogue for some time, who had listened to the Scripture readings and a considerable amount of Scripture exposition. In Acts they are called the God-fearers among the Gentiles. If we imagine this type of Gentile as the majority group in the communities Paul wrote to - in Rome or Galatia, for instance - we would be wise not to underestimate their capacity for rather advanced Jewish exposition of the Scriptures.
REID: Finally, what do you hope to achieve by publishing this book?
SKARSAUNE: I like to think of it as my personal synthesis of the many bits and pieces of a recently deconstructed jigsaw puzzle. There is a need for new attempts to bring the pieces together again, to launch a new connected narrative of Christian beginnings and of the first centuries of the church's life. I do not claim to have achieved a total picture, but maybe provided some pointers in the right direction. I have also had the ambition to provide the reader with a good read, first and foremost because I find the subject so immensely interesting myself.
What the Experts are Saying:
"Skarsaune has produced a gem that deftly lays out the major events, institutions, beliefs and figures of Judaism of late antiquity and how they shaped early Christianity." Craig A. Evans
"[Skarsaune] has not only harvested much specialized scholarship on this crucial question regarding Christian origins but also has his own personal contribution to make. This attractive presentation is a'must' for all students of the early church." I. Howard Marshall
"In binding together the New Testament's Jewish roots with the life of the early Jewish and Gentile church, this is an outstanding textbook of Christian origins." Markus Bockmuehl
Reprinted from "Academic Alert - IVP's Book Bulletin for Professors" Winter 2002 issue. Copyright (c) 2002 by Intervarsity Christian Fellowship/USA. All rights reserved. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com
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