Were Pharisees opposed to anything supernatural?

[Author’s Note: The following text is neither an endorsement nor a censure of Jewish mysticism as practiced today or during the biblical era. Rather, it is an attempt to present the facts of a multi-faceted and ancient religious philosophy in a short, manageable format for the Pneuma Review.]

Mysticism today connotes different things to different audiences. For some, it embodies the “New Age” movement, bordering on—if not leaping over—the edge of witchcraft. For others in more traditional forms of Christianity mysticism is ingrained into their culture, and rumored now again in the media with a crying icon or the silhouette of the Madonna “witnessed” on the side of a building or ink stain. In their faith, this expression of mysticism confirms their religion. C. S. Lewis, a committed Anglican, wrote: “The true religion gives value to its own mysticism; mysticism does not validate the religion in which it happens to occur” (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, page 65).

For our purposes, we are going to have an introductory examination of Jewish mysticism and its effect—if any—on the Christian faith. “Introductory” because with volumes of commentary on the subject spanning thousands of years, and us with only these few pages, an introduction is the best for which we can hope.

Perhaps, though, this introduction will motivate some to explore the subject further. For those I offer one piece of advice: do so prayerfully, leaning ever on the Holy Spirit so that, “He will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). When examining Jewish mysticism, all that glimmers is not gold. While it may appear attractive and “spiritual,” it may or may not actually be so. Paul teaches us that a “partial hardening has happened to Israel” (Romans 11:25). Partial is not a full hardening, neither is it full spirituality. There is gold and there is fools’ gold. Use wisdom so that you are not led astray.

The heading, Spiritual Ecstasy, was not an easy title upon which to settle for this article. Today, “ecstasy” brings with it negative connotations of illegal narcotics and sensual innuendo. However, to allow modern base behaviors to hijack a word does not change the fact that in the age of the second temple in Jerusalem, what we might call spiritual expression or charismata, was in those days known among the Hebrews as “Spiritual ecstasy.” Though many today have divorced the very concept that Jewish men and women in the days before, during, and following Jesus’ atoning incarnation believed in or practiced any godly form of spirituality, the recorded history says otherwise, and the term “spiritual ecstasy” appears frequently in the ancient extra biblical texts.

Similarly, this “spiritual ecstasy” has continued in certain circles of Jewish orthodoxy today. In what might be considered a paradox, those with the most religious fervor—in the sense of strict adherence to the Pentateuch and a complex code of oral traditions—do believe in and pursue what they refer to as “Spiritual ecstasy.” From their perspective, both now as well as in the ancient observances, anything that comes into contact with the divine must somehow transcend its mundane nature—including mankind.

So it is with this intention in mind that the title Spiritual Ecstasy is employed as an attempt to maintain continuity with the understanding of some of our fellow heirs of Father Abraham—the Jewish people.

Have you got Jesus All Wrong?

As a writer, I have the wonderful privilege of researching and meditating on one topic for months at a time. My latest project allowed me to focus on the grandest subject of all: Jesus. Growing up in the church, I learned his name as soon as I learned the names of my family members. But now, as an adult, what did I truly think about him? Which childhood impressions had been confirmed and which ones overturned?

As I reflect on what I learned in the process of writing The Jesus I Never Knew, I have come up with a “top ten” list. Please forgive me if the form seems irreverent. David Letterman style, it begins with number 10 and works upward.

Jesus was a Jew

I knew that, of course. But the more I studied Jesus, the more I realized that his humanity had receded far away. Every week in church I would repeat the creed, which, significantly, hustles through Jesus’ life. “… Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate,” it says. Did anything happen in the interval between birth and death?

Somehow, everything Jesus said and did in 33 years on earth gets swept aside in the rush to interpret his life correctly. For me, as for many others raised in the Christian tradition, the man who walked the dusty roads of Palestine has been all but lost. I knew Christ—“Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made”—but not Jesus, or Rabbi Jeshua bar-Joseph, the Jew from Nazareth.

A remarkable change has taken place in recent years, I learned during my library research: interest in Jesus is resurging among the Jews. In 1925, the Hebrew scholar Joseph Klausner could find only three full-length treatments of Jesus’ life by contemporary Jewish scholars. Now there are hundreds, including some of the most illuminating studies available. Modern Israeli schoolchildren learn that Jesus was a great teacher, who was subsequently “co-opted” by the Gentiles.

Jesus’ true-blue Jewishness leaps out from Matthew’s very first sentence, which introduces him as “the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Roughly, that might parallel an American politician being introduced as “the son of Abraham Lincoln, the son of George Washington.” Jesus grew up in a era of Jewish pride, when families were adopting names that harked back to the times of the patriarchs and the Exodus from Egypt (not unlike ethnic Americans who choose African names for their children). Circumcised as a baby, Jesus attended religious festivals in Jerusalem as a young man, and as an adult he worshiped in the synagogue and the temple. Even his controversies with other Jews, such as the Pharisees, underscored the fact that they expected him to share their values and act more like them.

Growing up, I did not know a single Jew. I do now. I know something of their culture: the close ties that keep sacred holidays alive even for families who no longer believe in their meaning; the passionate arguments that at first unsettled me but soon attracted me as a style of personal engagement; the respect, even reverence, for legalism amid a society that mainly values autonomy; the ability to link arms and dance and sing and laugh even when the world offers scant reason for celebration.

This was the culture Jesus grew up in, a Jewish culture. Yes, he changed it, but always from his starting point as a Jew. Now when I find myself wondering what Jesus was like as a teenager, I think of Jewish boys I know growing up in Chicago. When the thought jars me, I remember that in his own day Jesus got the opposite reaction. A Jewish teenager, surely—but the Son of God?