Akiva vs. the apostle

Passover begins on April 22. One of the reasons more Jews don’t celebrate Easter is that a great sage, Rabbi Akiva, helped to resurrect Judaism when it was at a low point following the proto-holocaust of A.D. 66-73. That’s when Roman soldiers plus famine killed 1 million Jews. That’s when the centerpiece of Jewish worship, the Temple in Jerusalem, was suddenly gone.

Rabbi Reuven Hammer’s Akiva: Life, Legend, Legacy (Jewish Publication Society, 2015) is an excellent introduction to the rabbi born sometime between A.D. 40 and 50. Romans executed Akiva sometime between A.D. 132 and 138, but not before what Hammer calls his “mystical approach” had created a new understanding that was “to Judaism what the ‘New Covenant’ was to Christianity.”

Hammer cites Akiva’s “concern about the spread of Christian doctrines. His older contemporary Paul, a Jew who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and a divine being, wished to take ownership of the Torah from Judaism.” Akiva fought that by saying “all the unwritten laws and interpretations” that had grown up over the centuries “were inherent in the text itself and had equal sanctity. … By preserving these traditions and laws and anchoring them in the text of the Torah, it was possible to further distinguish Judaism and Christianity and to claim that an important and intrinsic part of the original covenant was totally unknown to Christianity. … Only Judaism had all of this material. The Sages contended that … God’s covenant was made with Israel ‘only for the sake of that which was given orally,’ thus excluding Christians, who did not possess that oral material.”

Judaism and Christianity competed for many decades, and in A.D. 130 a Roman might have bet on Judaism: It had a less complicated theology—what was this “Trinity”?—and a strong base in Israel. But Akiva in his old age got mixed up in politics and, according to the Talmud, declared one rebel leader to be “the Messianic King.” Rome eventually put down the revolt, killing about 580,000 Jews in the process. One of them was Akiva.

Short stops

Makoto Fujimura’s Silence and Beauty (IVP, 2016) artfully probes Shusaku Endo’s famous novel Silence, and in doing so shows how God’s truth bores through silence and darkness. In The Political World of Bob Dylan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) Jeff Taylor and Chad Israelson read the tea leaves of Dylan’s life and conclude he is a “Christian anarchist.”

Liberty’s Nemesis, edited by Dean Reuter and John Yoo (Encounter, 2016), gives specific detail on the Obama administration’s aggressive audacity in healthcare, religious liberty, immigration, labor relations, and a host of other areas. Mez McConnell and Mike McKinley’s Church in Hard Places (Crossway, 2016) has the right subtitle: How the Local Church Brings Life to the Poor and Needy. Governmental welfare programs tend to treat people made in God’s image as pets who need food in their bowls each morning, but church programs can offer spiritual as well as material help.

Book companies these days often give thumbs-up to book proposals solely because their authors have “platforms”: Speaking appearances with book tables are a publisher’s best friend. Samuel Rodriguez has a big platform as president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, so he could have dialed in a new book with some homilies and autobiographical stories, but Be Light (WaterBrook, 2016) is a thoughtful meditation on light of various kinds combating darkness.

In 7 Truths That Changed the World (Baker, 2012), Kenneth Samples summarizes Christianity’s “dangerous ideas,” including “clear pointers to God,” salvation “not by works,” and “the good in suffering.” Nathan Finn’s History: A Student’s Guide (2016) is another short and helpful Crossway book outlining approaches to fields of study. Other specific books in the series: Literature, Philosophy, Political Thought, Art and Music, and Ethics and Moral Reasoning. —M.O.