Why I Started Studying Jewish Commentators to Understand Jesus

Learning From Jewish Voices

The deeper I went in my journey, the more I read, listened, and researched. I bought an edition of the Torah with commentary by Rashi and began encountering a way of reading that was new to me.

Rashi—Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki—was an influential Jewish commentator who lived in medieval France from 1040 to 1105. His explanations of the Hebrew Bible and Talmud became foundational to generations of Jewish study.

My thinking began to change. If I wanted to understand a living community or tradition, I needed to listen to people within it rather than rely only on assumptions from outside. Jewish communities and scholars are wonderfully diverse, so no single commentator could speak for everyone. Still, it made sense to include Jewish voices when learning about Jewish Scripture, interpretation, and practice.

What Rashi Could—and Could Not—Teach Me

Rashi helped me see how a major Jewish interpreter read the Torah and drew upon earlier rabbinic traditions. His commentary opened questions, connections, and layers in the text that I had not noticed before.

At the same time, I learned to be historically careful. Rashi lived roughly a thousand years after Jesus, so his writings are not a direct record of first-century Jewish life. Understanding the Jewish context of Jesus also requires attention to the Hebrew Scriptures, Jewish writings from the Second Temple period, the New Testament in its historical setting, archaeology, and responsible modern scholarship.

I also came to understand that Jewish traditions do not all come from one book or one period. They may grow through Scripture, rabbinic interpretation, halakhah, liturgy, communal history, and local custom. Learning that complexity helped me replace quick conclusions with better questions.

Seeking Context With Humility

At first, I wrestled with studying sources outside the Bible. Yet I also recognized that Christians regularly learn from pastors, theologians, historians, and commentators. In some of my own conversations, Jewish perspectives were treated with suspicion before they were even heard. That experience saddened me, but I did not want to turn it into a judgment about all Christians or all churches.

My goal was not to use Judaism merely as a tool for proving Christian claims, nor to claim Jewish traditions as my own. I wanted to understand Jesus within his first-century Jewish world while honoring Judaism and Jewish scholarship as living traditions with their own integrity.

I did not have to agree with every interpretation to listen respectfully. Jewish commentary could deepen my awareness of how texts have been read across generations, while historical sources could help me distinguish later interpretation from the world of the earliest followers of Jesus.

Seeking context does not require us to erase differences. It asks us to listen carefully, study honestly, and honor the people whose traditions we are learning about.

Have you ever discovered that listening to a perspective outside your own community helped you read a familiar text with greater humility?

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