Harvard Divinity School, Center for the Study of World Religion, CSWR Director’s Conference Room, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Two temporal themes connected to Jesus the Jew play a central role in explicit and implicit supersessionism: the time of his birth and his holy time, the Sabbath. Can the memory of Jesus the Jew help to build an understanding of Christian time that affirms the Jewish calendar without making it its own? And can the memory of Jesus the Jew help to fend off latent Christian supersessionism and foster an affirmative Christian approach to Jewish time? Does Jesus’ birth count differently if Jesus is remembered as born a Jew? My thesis is that the understanding of Jesus’ being born into Jewish time enhances Christian memory. Christians may continue to count Christian beginnings from the year they remember as Jesus’ birth, but they can also confirm the Jewish memory of creation.
Barbara U. Meyer is Professor of Religious Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her most recent book is Jesus the Jew in Christian Memory: Theological and Philosophical Explorations, published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press and now out in paperback. She has authored numerous articles on contemporary interreligious dynamics and changing Christian approaches to Law, and her new research project is about time in post-supersessionist Christian theology.