What is the difference between Christianity and Judaism?

Our Elder Brothers in Faith: A Christian’s Guide to Understanding Judaism

In the heart of the Christian faith lies a powerful and unbreakable connection to the Jewish people. It was into the Jewish world that our Lord Jesus was born; it was from the Jewish people that he called his first apostles.¹ Our scriptures, our savior, and our story of salvation all draw their life from the rich soil of the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For this reason, Pope John Paul II, in a historic visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome, spoke of the Jewish people not as strangers, but as our “dearly beloved brothers, and in a certain way our elder brothers”.²

Yet, for centuries, this family relationship has been marked by painful separation and tragic misunderstanding.³ A “teaching of contempt” often replaced love, and the branches forgot the root that sustained them. This article is an invitation to heal that memory. It is not a debate to be won, but a journey of understanding to be undertaken in a spirit of love and humility. By exploring the differences that define our two faiths, we can build bridges of respect and rediscover the deep spiritual patrimony we share.⁵ Our faith cannot be fully understood without reference to Judaism, and in learning about our elder brothers, we may come to understand ourselves, and the God we both worship, more profoundly.⁴

To begin this journey, it is helpful to have a map of the main points of divergence. The following table provides a brief overview of the core theological distinctions that will be explored in greater detail throughout this guide.

Why Don’t Jewish People Believe Jesus is the Messiah?

For Christians, the confession that “Jesus is Lord” is the very center of our faith. It is the answer to our deepest questions and the source of our greatest hope. Therefore, it can be difficult to understand why our Jewish neighbors, who share so much of our scripture and history, do not share this belief. It is a question that must be approached with gentleness, recognizing it stems not from stubbornness, but from a different understanding of God’s promises.

The most essential difference between Christianity and Judaism is the person and work of Jesus Christ.⁷ Christian faith proclaims that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Christ, the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible.¹³ Jewish theology, But does not include Jesus; he is not considered a divine being or the awaited Messiah.⁷

This divergence arises from different interpretations of what the Messiah was prophesied to do. In Jewish tradition, the mashiach (Hebrew for “anointed one”) is understood to be a great human leader, a descendant of King David, who would bring about a messianic age of global peace and justice.¹⁵ The core expectations for this figure, based on passages in the Hebrew prophets, include gathering the Jewish people from exile back to the Land of Israel, rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem, and establishing a universal knowledge of the God of Israel, thus ending all war, hatred, and suffering.⁶

From a Jewish perspective, Jesus did not accomplish these tasks. After his life, the world continued to be filled with war, tragedy, and sin; it was not redeemed in the way the prophets described.⁶ The Christian belief that Jesus came primarily to offer spiritual salvation from sin rather than physical and political liberation is seen as a redefinition of the messiah’s role.¹⁷ The Christian teaching that the prophecies of an earthly kingdom will be fulfilled at Jesus’s Second Coming is a theological development to account for this reality.¹⁶

This reveals that the disagreement is not merely about the identity of the Messiah, but about the very purpose of the Messiah. The term itself shifted in meaning. In Hebrew, mashiach simply means “anointed one,” a title given to kings and priests who were anointed with oil for their roles.¹⁵ It designates a human being with a special, God-given task. As the early Christian movement grew, the Greek equivalent,

Christos, became fused with the concept of divinity, especially after the belief in his resurrection took hold.¹⁶ So while Judaism awaited a human king to restore a nation, Christianity proclaimed a divine savior to redeem the soul.

This leads to a further distinction: the nature of the salvation being sought. In Judaism, messianic salvation is understood primarily as a collective and national event—the physical redemption and restoration of the people of Israel to their land and their proper relationship with God.¹⁸ In Christianity, salvation through Christ is understood as an individual and spiritual reality—the forgiveness of personal sin and the promise of eternal life for all who believe, Jew and Gentile alike.⁶ The two faiths, therefore, look for a messiah to solve different fundamental problems: Judaism seeks a solution to the problem of exile and a broken world, while Christianity offers a solution to the problem of individual sin and separation from God.

How Do We Understand God Differently?

At the heart of both Christianity and Judaism is the foundational belief in one God, the creator of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham.¹³ This shared monotheism is a deep bond between us. Yet, within this shared belief lies a powerful and defining difference in how we understand the very nature of this one God.

The quintessential declaration of Jewish faith is the Shema Yisrael, recited daily by observant Jews: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4).⁶ This is not merely a statement that there is only one God, but an affirmation of God’s absolute and indivisible unity. Jewish theology emphasizes a strict monotheism, rejecting any concept of God taking on a human form or being divisible into parts.⁸ This understanding of God’s indivisible oneness was powerfully solidified during Israel’s history, particularly in the period following the Babylonian exile, as a clear departure from the polytheism of surrounding nations.⁶

Christianity, on the other hand, professes belief in the Trinity. Based on the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit, Christian theology developed the doctrine that the one God exists as three distinct, co-eternal, and co-equal persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.⁸ This is a central mystery of the Christian faith. From a Jewish perspective, But the doctrine of the Trinity appears to compromise the absolute unity of God, and early rabbinic writings argued strongly against any theology that suggested “two powers in heaven”.⁶

This difference in understanding God’s nature is a direct result of the difference in understanding Jesus. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity arose as the early Church grappled with a powerful question: How can we reconcile our inherited Jewish belief in one God with our experience of Jesus as divine? The Trinity was the theological answer to that question, a framework to affirm both the oneness of God and the divinity of Christ.⁶ For Judaism, since the premise of Jesus’s divinity is not accepted, the theological conclusion of the Trinity is unnecessary and seen as a departure from pure monotheism.

These different views of God’s nature also foster different primary modes of relationship with Him. In Judaism, the relationship is fundamentally covenantal. It is a partnership between God and the Jewish people, lived out through the observance of the mitzvot (commandments) given in the Torah.⁹ It is a relationship of action, obedience, and dialogue with a transcendent God. In Christianity, the relationship is also incarnational. God did not just make a covenant; He became a human being in the person of Jesus.¹³ This creates a path of personal relationship that is mediated

through the person of Christ, an immanent God who entered our world and shared our life.

Do We Read the Same Bible?

Both Christians and Jews cherish the sacred texts that tell the stories of creation, the patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt, and the prophets. The Hebrew Bible is the very root from which the Christian faith grew.¹⁹ But to say that we read the “same book” can be misleading. Although we share a vast and precious library of scripture, we have different canons, different arrangements, and most importantly, different lenses through which we read and interpret these sacred words.

The collection of scriptures that Jews call the Tanakh is known to Christians as the Old Testament.⁹ The Tanakh is an acronym for its three sections: the

Torah (the first five books, or the Law), the Nevi’im (the Prophets), and the Ketuvim (the Writings).⁶ The Christian Old Testament contains all of these books, but arranges them differently. Typically, the prophetic books are placed at the end of the Old Testament, creating a narrative arc that seems to anticipate a coming resolution, a “cliffhanger” that the New Testament then answers.²⁰ The Tanakh, by contrast, concludes with the Writings (specifically 2 Chronicles in the traditional order), ending with the decree of Cyrus for the Jews to return from exile and rebuild the Temple—an ending that emphasizes the ongoing story of the covenant people. This different ordering is not merely editorial; it is a theological statement about the purpose and completeness of the narrative.

The canons are not entirely identical. Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles include several books, often called the deuterocanonical books or Apocrypha, that are not part of the Jewish or Protestant biblical canons.⁹

The most major difference, of course, is the Christian inclusion of the New Testament, which contains the Gospels, the letters of the apostles, and the book of Revelation. Judaism does not recognize the New Testament as sacred scripture.⁹ This is because the New Testament’s central purpose is to proclaim the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s plan—a claim that, as discussed, Judaism does not accept.

Even more crucial than the structural differences is the interpretive lens each faith brings to the shared text. Christians read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus Christ. From the first pages of Genesis to the final words of Malachi, the Old Testament is seen as pointing toward Jesus, filled with prophecies, types, and foreshadowings of his life and redemptive work.⁶ For Judaism, the Tanakh is read through the lens of its own rich interpretive tradition, most importantly the Talmud. The Talmud is a vast compendium of rabbinic discussions, interpretations, and laws, considered to be the “Oral Torah” that was revealed to Moses on Sinai alongside the “Written Torah”.⁶ This Oral Law provides the framework for understanding and applying the biblical commandments to daily life. Christianity does not accept the authority of the Oral Torah.⁹

Because of these different interpretive frameworks, the “Old Testament” and the “Tanakh” effectively function as two different books, even when the words on the page are the same. A Christian reading Isaiah 53 sees a clear prophecy of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the sins of humanity.¹³ A Jewish reading, guided by rabbinic tradition, understands the “suffering servant” in that passage to be a personification of the nation of Israel, suffering in exile for the sake of the world.¹⁶ The text is identical, but the meaning derived by each community is fundamentally different. For respectful dialogue, it is vital to acknowledge that we are not just disagreeing on interpretation; we are engaging with two distinct streams of living tradition that have flowed from a common source.

How Are We Saved from Sin?

Every human heart carries the knowledge of its own failings, of moments when we have missed the mark of God’s will. This is what both our traditions call sin. The longing for forgiveness, for atonement, and for restoration to a right relationship with God is a universal human cry. Both Christianity and Judaism offer a path back to God, a way to find healing and wholeness, though the maps we follow are different.

A key difference begins with the understanding of sin itself. Much of Christian theology is built upon the doctrine of “Original Sin,” the belief that because of Adam’s fall, all of humanity is born into a state of sinfulness, inherently separated from God and unable to save ourselves.¹¹ Judaism rejects this concept.¹⁰ In Jewish thought, sin is an

act of disobedience, not an inherent state of being. People are created with both a yetzer hara (an inclination to do evil) and a yetzer hatov (an inclination to do good), and they possess the free will to choose between them. One is not born condemned, but born with the capacity to choose righteousness or to transgress.¹²

This different diagnosis of the human condition leads to a different prescription for a cure. For Christianity, since the problem is an inherent state of sinfulness, the solution must come from outside of humanity. Salvation is a gift of God’s grace, made possible by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.⁶ Through faith in Jesus, a believer is forgiven, reconciled to God, and granted eternal life. While good works are a vital fruit and expression of a living faith, salvation itself is received by faith, not earned by deeds.⁹

For Judaism, since the problem is the commission of sinful acts, the solution lies in the human capacity for repentance and return. The path to atonement is called teshuva, a Hebrew word that means “return.” It is a process that involves acknowledging one’s wrongdoing, feeling genuine remorse, desisting from the sin, confessing to God, and making restitution to any person who was harmed.¹⁰ This process is centered on prayer, introspection, and a commitment to change one’s actions. The idea of a human sacrifice for sin is seen as abhorrent and contrary to the teachings of the Torah.²² The annual observance of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is a national day dedicated to this process of teshuva.¹⁰

This leads to a misunderstanding of the term “salvation” itself. In a Christian context, “to be saved” means to be rescued from the eternal consequence of sin—damnation—through faith in Christ. This concept is largely foreign to the Jewish framework. Jewish users in online forums frequently express this: “‘Saved’ is a totally Christian thing—it has nothing to do with Judaism”.²³ “Humanity does not need saving” from an inherent state of sin, but rather needs to atone for specific wrongdoings.²² The Hebrew word for salvation, yeshua, appears often in the Tanakh, but it almost always refers to a physical deliverance or rescue from tangible danger, like enemies or oppression—a collective, earthly event rather than an individual, otherworldly one.²⁴

This difference also shapes the focus of the moral life. In Judaism, the purpose of righteous living is not primarily to secure a place in the afterlife, but to fulfill one’s covenantal obligations in this life. It is about sanctifying the everyday and participating in tikkun olam, the healing and mending of the world.¹¹ This is a powerful point of understanding: the Jewish emphasis on good deeds ( mitzvot) is not about “works-based righteousness” in the sense of earning a ticket to heaven, but about the joyful and obligatory partnership with God in making this world a dwelling place for His presence.

What Happens After We Die?

The question of what lies beyond the veil of this life is one of humanity’s deepest and most persistent mysteries. Christian faith offers a clear and central hope: resurrection and eternal life with God, made possible through the victory of Jesus Christ over death.²⁶ For our Jewish brothers and sisters, the tradition holds a wider variety of views, with a consistent and beautiful emphasis on the importance of living a meaningful life here on earth.

Christianity places a strong emphasis on the afterlife. The New Testament speaks clearly of heaven as the eternal home of the righteous and hell as a place of eternal punishment and separation from God.⁶ The ultimate Christian hope is not just a disembodied spiritual existence, but a bodily resurrection into a new heaven and a new earth, where believers will dwell in the full presence of God, free from sin, suffering, and death.²⁷ Within this broad framework, different Christian traditions have varying beliefs. Some hold to a belief in eternal conscious torment for the unrepentant, others believe in annihilationism (the cessation of existence), and some are universalists, who believe all will ultimately be reconciled to God.³⁰ The Catholic Church also teaches the doctrine of Purgatory, an intermediate state of purification for those who die in God’s grace but are not yet perfected, so they may achieve the holiness necessary to enter heaven.⁹

In contrast, Judaism is a religion that is profoundly focused on Olam HaZeh—this world.¹¹ The primary religious task is not to prepare for the next world, but to live according to God’s commandments in this one, to build just communities, and to bring holiness into the everyday.¹¹ As one psalm declares, “The dead cannot praise the Lord… But we the living will bless the Lord, now and forever” (Psalm 115).³²

Because of this focus, there is no single, universally required dogma about the afterlife in Judaism; beliefs are diverse and have evolved over time.³³ Early biblical texts speak of Sheol, a shadowy underworld to which all the dead—righteous and wicked alike—descend, a place of forgetfulness without reward or punishment.²⁹

Later, influenced by the experience of exile and the problem of righteous suffering, rabbinic thought developed more detailed concepts. Olam Ha-Ba, “the World to Come,” is a term that can refer to the future messianic age on earth, the era of the resurrection of the dead, or a spiritual afterlife realm.³⁴ This heavenly realm is often called

Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden), envisioned as a place of spiritual bliss and closeness to God.³⁴

For those who are not perfectly righteous, many Jewish traditions teach of a place called Gehenna (or Gehinnom). This is not typically understood as an eternal hell in the Christian sense. Rather, it is seen as a temporary place of purification, a spiritual “washing machine” where the soul is cleansed of its earthly transgressions.²⁶ This period of purgation is generally believed to last no more than twelve months, after which the soul is ready to ascend to

Gan Eden.¹⁰ This concept reflects a view of God’s justice as being ultimately remedial and restorative for the vast majority of souls, rather than purely and eternally retributive.

Crucially, Judaism teaches that one does not need to be Jewish to merit a share in the World to Come. The tradition holds that the righteous of all nations, those non-Jews who live moral lives according to the basic ethical principles known as the Noahide Laws, have a place in the afterlife.²⁶

How Did Our Two Faiths Go Their Separate Ways?

The story of how Christianity and Judaism became two distinct religions is a complex and often painful family history. We were not always separate. The first Christians were Jews, worshipping in the Temple and synagogues, who believed that the Jewish Messiah had come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.¹⁶ The separation was not a single event, but a slow and gradual “parting of the ways” that unfolded over centuries, driven by theological disagreements, social pressures, and historical calamities.¹⁶

In the beginning, the followers of Jesus were a sect within the diverse landscape of Second Temple Judaism.³⁶ They continued to live as Jews, with the additional belief that Jesus was the Messiah.³⁷ A critical early step toward separation was the decision made at the Council of Jerusalem around 49 CE. Here, the apostle James, the brother of Jesus, decreed that Gentile converts to the Jesus movement did not need to undergo circumcision or follow the entirety of the Mosaic Law to be included.¹⁶ This decision opened the floodgates to non-Jewish converts and set Gentile Christianity on a different trajectory from its Jewish origins.¹⁶

The missionary work of the apostle Paul was another major catalyst. He passionately argued that Gentiles should not be required to convert fully to Judaism, and his message of salvation through faith in Christ, often preached in synagogues, created tensions with some Jewish communities.¹⁶

The most catastrophic event to shape this process was the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. This event was a powerful trauma for all Jews and fundamentally reshaped the religious landscape. With the sacrificial system gone, two main paths of survival and redefinition emerged. One was Rabbinic Judaism, which focused on the study of the Torah and the development of the Talmud to create a new center for Jewish life based on prayer, study, and observance of the law. The other was the growing Christian movement, which increasingly interpreted the Temple’s destruction as a divine punishment upon the Jewish people for rejecting Jesus as the Messiah.¹⁶

By the second century, the separation was becoming more pronounced. Christian communities were by then composed largely of Gentiles.³⁷ They developed their own leadership structure of bishops and began producing a body of literature known as

Adversos Iudaeos (“Against the Jews”). These writings sought to define the new Christian identity by contrasting it with, and often denigrating, Judaism.¹⁶ A key and tragic theme of this literature was the idea of “supersessionism” or “replacement theology”—the claim that the Church had replaced Israel as God’s chosen people, becoming the “

verus Israel” (the true Israel).⁴

It is important to understand that this theological separation was also fueled by social and political pressures. Within the Roman Empire, Judaism was an ancient and legally recognized religion, granted certain protections and exemptions. The nascent Christian movement, seen by Rome as a new and illicit superstition, was often persecuted.¹⁶ Part of the motivation for the

Adversos Iudaeos literature was a political one: to convince the Roman authorities that Christianity was not a new religion, but the true and ancient fulfillment of Judaism, and therefore deserving of the same legal status. This required arguing that contemporary Judaism was a false and corrupted faith.¹⁶

Despite the hardening lines drawn by religious leaders, the separation was not always neat and tidy on the ground. For centuries, in many parts of the empire, Jews and Christians continued to live side-by-side, attending each other’s services, and influencing one another’s practices, long after a formal split had been declared.¹⁶ The “parting of the ways” was a complex process that took a long time to filter down from the realm of theology and politics into the everyday lives of the people.

What is the Catholic Church’s Teaching on Our Relationship with the Jewish People?

For nearly two millennia, the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people was tragically marred by a “teaching of contempt”.⁴ This theology, which viewed Jews as accursed for the death of Jesus and superseded by the Church in God’s plan, helped to create a climate of hostility that contributed to centuries of persecution.⁵ But in the 20th century, guided by the Holy Spirit and in the shadow of the horrific tragedy of the Holocaust (Shoah), the Church undertook a powerful and revolutionary re-examination of its relationship with its elder brothers in faith.

The watershed moment came during the Second Vatican Council with the promulgation of the declaration Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”) on October 28, 1965.⁴⁰ This brief but monumental document, along with subsequent teachings from popes and Vatican commissions, fundamentally reset the Church’s theological posture toward the Jewish people.

The key teachings of this new approach are transformative:

the Church definitively rejects the charge of deicide. Nostra Aetate states clearly that the responsibility for Jesus’s death cannot be charged against all Jews, either those alive at the time or Jews today.¹ This repudiated a false accusation that had fueled antisemitism for centuries.

The Church condemns all forms of antisemitism. The Council declared that the Church “deplores hatreds, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone”.³⁹ Pope John Paul II would later call antisemitism a “sin against God and humanity”.²

In a truly revolutionary theological development, the Church teaches that God’s covenant with the Jewish people is unbroken and has never been revoked.¹ This explicitly renounces the doctrine of supersessionism or “replacement theology”.⁴ The Church now affirms that the Jewish people continue to be in a valid, saving covenant with God.

The Church emphasizes the shared spiritual patrimony that binds Christians and Jews. It draws on the Apostle Paul’s image of the “good olive tree” of Israel, onto which the “wild shoots” of the Gentiles have been grafted.² This imagery affirms that the Church draws its spiritual sustenance from its Jewish roots.

Finally, this new understanding has practical consequences for mission. In light of the affirmation of God’s eternal covenant with the Jewish people, the Church no longer supports specific institutional missions aimed at their conversion.⁴ How it is possible for Jews to participate in God’s salvation without explicit confession of Christ is acknowledged to be “an unfathomable divine mystery”.¹

This “sea-change” in teaching is more than a mere policy update; it is a powerful act of theological repentance. It represents the Church looking honestly at its own history, identifying a deeply flawed theology, and correcting it at its very root. The journey from viewing Jews as “repudiated” by God to embracing them as “dearly beloved brothers” is one of the most major and hopeful developments in modern religious history.² This new teaching challenges Christians to live in a mysterious theological space, holding in tension two great truths: the universal saving significance of Jesus Christ, and the enduring, unbreakable covenant that God maintains with the Jewish people. It replaces a posture of hostile certainty with one of humble and reverent awe at the inscrutable ways of God.

How Does Daily Faith and Worship Look Different?

Faith is not only a matter of belief, but also of practice. It is woven into the fabric of daily life through rituals, rhythms, and sacred observances that shape a community’s identity. While Christians and Jews share a common heritage, the ways they live out their faith on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis are beautifully distinct.

The rhythm of the week is different. For Christians, the week culminates in Sunday, the Lord’s Day, a celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.⁶ For Jews, the week is centered on

Shabbat, the Sabbath, which is observed from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. It is a holy day of rest, prayer, and family, commanded in the Torah as a memorial of both creation and the freedom from slavery in Egypt.⁶

The annual cycle of holidays also follows different narratives. The Christian liturgical year is structured around the life of Christ, with its high points being Christmas (the incarnation) and Easter (the resurrection).⁶ The Jewish calendar is built around a cycle of festivals prescribed in the Torah, which commemorate key events in Israel’s history. These include

Pesach (Passover), which celebrates the Exodus from Egypt; Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks), which marks the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai; and the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), a solemn period of repentance and introspection.⁴⁴

Many key Christian observances have their roots in these Jewish festivals. The Last Supper was a Passover Seder, and Christians see the themes of the sacrificial lamb and redemption from bondage as being ultimately fulfilled in Jesus.⁴⁵ Pentecost, the Christian celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit, occurs at the same time as Shavuot.⁴⁵

Daily religious practices also differ. Christian worship often centers on sacraments like Baptism and the Eucharist (or Holy Communion), which are seen as outward signs of inward grace.⁶ Jewish practice, on the other hand, is guided by the

mitzvot (commandments), which cover all aspects of life. This includes practices like observing kashrut (the dietary laws, such as separating meat and dairy products), daily prayer, and the wearing of symbolic items like the kippah (yarmulke) by men as a sign of reverence, or the tzitzit (fringes) on a four-cornered garment as a reminder of the commandments.¹⁵

These practices reflect a subtle but important difference in focus. Jewish observance is often about sanctifying the physical world—bringing holiness into ordinary acts like eating, dressing, and resting. It is about making the material world a vessel for the divine.¹¹ Christian practice is often more focused on inner spiritual transformation and communion with God through the sacraments.⁶ This helps to understand that the detailed laws of Judaism are not seen by observant Jews as a burden, but as a joyful framework for partnering with God in the ongoing work of creation.

What is the Significance of the Holy Land for Each Faith?

The land that Christians and Jews both call Holy is a place of powerful spiritual significance for both faiths. It is the stage upon which our shared story of salvation began, the landscape of Abraham’s journey, David’s kingdom, and Jesus’s ministry. For both Jew and Christian, it is a land of promise, but the nature and meaning of that promise are understood in different ways.

For Judaism, the connection to Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel, is a core and inseparable part of its identity. It is a fundamental element of the covenant God made with Abraham, a physical, geographical inheritance promised to the Jewish people for all time.⁴⁷ The entire religious identity of Judaism is interwoven with the people, the Torah,

and the Land.⁴⁹ The centuries of exile from the land are seen as a national tragedy, and the return of the Jewish people to the land in modern times is viewed by many Jews, both religious and secular, as the fulfillment of ancient prophecy and a central expression of their peoplehood.²

For Christianity, the land is sacred primarily because of its history. It is the place where God became man, where Jesus walked, taught, performed miracles, suffered, died, and rose from the dead. It is the physical backdrop for the story of redemption. Christians make pilgrimages to the Holy Land to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and to connect with the historical roots of their faith. But in most mainstream Christian theology, the specific biblical promise of the land to ethnic Israel is seen as having been redefined or spiritualized by the coming of Christ. The “Promised Land” becomes a metaphor for the Kingdom of God or for heaven, a spiritual inheritance that is open to all people, of all nations, through faith in Jesus.⁴⁷

There is, But a major stream within Protestantism known as Christian Zionism, which holds a view much closer to the Jewish one. Christian Zionists believe that the biblical promises concerning the land remain literal, unconditional, and unfulfilled, and that the modern state of Israel is a direct fulfillment of these biblical prophecies.⁴⁹

This disagreement over the significance of the land is, in many ways, a perfect microcosm of the broader interpretive differences between the two faiths. Those who read the Old Testament promises literally—many Jews and Christian Zionists—see an enduring promise of a physical territory to a specific people. Those who read the Old Testament through a Christological and typological lens—much of mainstream Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christianity—see those physical promises as finding their ultimate and spiritual fulfillment in the person of Jesus and the global family of the Church.⁴⁹ The debate is not just about politics or geography; it is a fundamental disagreement about how to read the Bible.

How Can We Better Understand and Love Our Jewish Neighbors?

This journey of understanding our Jewish neighbors is incomplete if it remains only an intellectual exercise. Knowledge, if it is to be truly Christian, must lead to love. The final and most important step is to take what has been learned and allow it to transform our hearts and our actions, so that we may build authentic friendships, dispel harmful myths, and truly love our Jewish neighbors as ourselves.

The first step is to actively recognize and reject the many common stereotypes and misconceptions about Judaism. It is vital to remember that Judaism is not a monolithic entity. It is an incredibly diverse civilization, encompassing a wide spectrum of ethnic backgrounds (such as Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi), cultures, and levels of religious observance, from staunchly secular to ultra-Orthodox.⁵⁰ Judaism is not just a religion; it is also a culture and a peoplehood. Many people identify as culturally Jewish without being religiously observant, and for them, their Jewishness is an essential part of their identity.⁵⁰ The common Christian caricature of the “Old Testament God” as a God of wrath, in contrast to the New Testament’s God of love, is a false and harmful dichotomy. Jews and Christians worship the same God of Abraham, who is revealed in scripture as being both just and merciful, loving and compassionate.³

The second step is to approach dialogue with humility and respect. True friendship requires listening more than speaking. We must resist the temptation to view our Jewish neighbors as “incomplete Christians” or their faith as a stepping stone to our own. The Catholic Church’s teaching that God’s covenant with the Jewish people is valid and unbroken should guide us to a posture of respect.⁴ We must honor the fact that they have a full, rich, and living relationship with God on their own terms. As those who seek to share the Gospel know, one cannot argue another person into a relationship with God.⁵³

This humility extends to our use of language. As we have seen, core theological terms like “messiah,” “sin,” and “salvation” carry vastly different meanings in our two traditions. Using our Christian vocabulary to describe Jewish beliefs can lead to powerful confusion and misunderstanding.²³ We must strive to understand their concepts in their own context.

The most major barrier to understanding is the common assumption that Judaism operates within the same basic theological framework as Christianity, just without Jesus. It does not. It has a different understanding of the core human problem, a different vision of redemption, and a different way of reading our shared scriptures.²³ The most important pastoral step, therefore, is a fundamental shift in perspective: to try to understand the Jewish faith from the inside out, on its own terms, rather than trying to fit it into our Christian categories.

For Christians, this work is not simply an optional exercise in interfaith niceness. It is essential to a deeper understanding of our own faith. The Church teaches that Judaism is not extrinsic to our religion, but in a certain way, intrinsic to it.² Jesus lived and died a faithful Jew.⁴ The apostles were Jews. The New Testament was written by Jews.⁵⁴ To understand the world of Jesus and the context of our own scriptures, we must seek to understand the faith of our elder brothers and sisters. In doing so, we not only build bridges of love to our neighbors, but we also deepen the roots of our own Christian faith.