"Born a Jew . . . raised a Jew . . . still a Jew”—this is what the Messianic Jewish community declares about the resurrected Yeshua, the root of Jesse, the king of Israel. It is also what Yeshua declares about himself at the end of the Apostolic Writings: “I am [present tense] the Root and the Offspring of David” (Rev 22:16).

Yeshua’s identity as the “son of David” is central to the gospel message. As Paul put it, “Remember Yeshua the Messiah, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel” (2 Tim 2:8). Note the order— “raised from the dead, descended from David.” Paul seems to imply here that the resurrected Yeshua remains a descendant of David. In describing his gospel to the congregation in Rome, Paul similarly emphasizes that Messiah is “descended from David according to the flesh” (Rom 1:3). He reminds the Gentile believers that the Messiah is an Israelite “according to the flesh” (Rom 9:5; cf. 15:12).

Viewing Yeshua as a risen Jew has implications for our understanding of Jewish and Gentile identity in Messiah. The debate over how to describe Yeshua’s divine-human nature (in the fifth–seventh centuries) required a vocabulary rich in nuances to explain how the Messiah’s humanity coexisted with his divinity without diminishment of either nature. This vocabulary can also be utilized to explain how new creation identity and Jewish identity¹ (as well as new creation identity and Gentile identity) coexist in union, without one diminishing the other.

I am presently teaching a class on Matthew (Seminar in Besorot) so I am wading through this first book of the Apostolic Writings. Most Messianic Jews know that Matthew identifies Yeshua as the son of Abraham in the opening line of his besorah (gospel)—“This is the genealogy of Yeshua the Messiah, son of David, son of Avraham” (Matt 1:1)—but have you ever noticed that Matthew seems to return to this theme at the end of his narrative?

Matthew begins his besorah by identifying Yeshua with Abraham who commences the story of Israel’s Messiah. Emphasis on Abraham then recurs at the conclusion of the genealogy when Matthew summarizes the genealogical chain that links Yeshua to Abraham, “Thus there were four- teen generations from Avraham to David, fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian Exile, and fourteen generations from the Babylonian Exile to the Messiah” (Matt 1:17).

God’s concern for the Gentiles is another literary theme in Matthew 1. The mention of Gentiles who joined themselves to Israel, such as Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Uriah, rep- resents a subtext that Abraham and his seed were called to bless the nations (Matt 1:3, 5, 6; cf. 2:1–2; 3:9; 8:11; Gen 12:2–3; 17:5; 18:18; 1 Macc 12:19–21).

Luke’s besorah (gospel) is sometimes called the “gospel of hospitality.” This is in part because it describes the coming of the Messiah as a “visitation from God” (Luke 19:44)¹ and focuses on the question of how people responded to “the Messiah, the Son of God” (Matt 16:16; 26:63). Consider two scenes in Luke’s besorah.

In Luke 2:1–20, we are told that Yeshua the son of David was born in the city of David.² However, the residents of this prophesied city (Mic 5:1[2])³ did not recognize the time of their visitation or go out of their way to be hospitable to Yeshua and his family. Luke notes that because there was no room for Miryam and Yosef in the living-quarters, they had to find shelter in a barn. After Yeshua was born, Miryam laid the Messiah in a feeding trough or box for animals. Shepherds soon arrive, marveling over the child and praising God. Finally, a proper welcome!

The Scriptures seem to indicate that Messianic Jews have a covenantal responsibility to observe Passover but that Gentile Christians do not (Exod 12:43–49; Matt 26:17–19; Acts 15; 21:17–26; 1 Cor 7:17–20). This said, the Gentile wing of the ekklesia early on saw value in celebrating a Gentile form of Passover that centuries later became known as Easter. I would like to make several comments about this early Christian tradition, which for lack of a better term I will call “Gentile Passover.”

Second-century Gentile churches followed two calendar traditions concerning Gentile Passover. It appears that almost all of the churches in Asia (where Paul devoted much of his ministry [1 Cor 16:8, 19; Acts 19:10, 26]), as well as churches in Asia Minor, Cilicia, Syria, and Mesopotamia, observed Gentile Passover in accordance with the Jewish festival calendar, on the fourteenth day of the first month, the month of Nissan (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.23.1; 5:24:1; Athanasius, Syn. 2; Epiphanius, Pan. 70.9.8-9; 10.3–5; Theodoret, Haer. Fab. Comp. 3.4). Far from being a minor schismatic group, Christians who celebrated Gentile Passover on Nissan 14 stretched across a vast geographic region. Many of these Gentile Christians celebrated with Jews, and the similarity of their observance to Jewish Passover probably varied from community to community.

By contrast, the churches in the West—in Italy, Greece (including Corinth), Spain, Britain, Gaul (which included the present-day area of France, Belgium, the south Netherlands, south-west Germany)— observed Gentile Passover on the Sunday following Nissan 14 (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.23.1; Vit. Const. 3.18). These churches retained the name Pascha (Passover), but they moved away from celebrating Passover on the same day as Jews, with Jews, and in the manner of Jews.

There are two classic models for describing the relationship between the ecclesia (church) and Israel. Supersessionism, a view advocated by many of the early church fathers, maintains that the ecclesia is the new spiritual Israel and replaces carnal Israel, the Jewish nation, as the people of God. For centuries, the negative justification for this displacement was that, by rejecting Yeshua, the Jewish people violated their covenant with God, which was conditioned on faithfulness. Texts in Scripture that refer to God’s promises to Israel and Israel’s eschatological role are, therefore, now to be interpreted allegorically in reference to the ecclesia. This ecclesiological perspective has been termed “punitive supersessionism.”

In recent years, a less negative justification for supersessionism has become widespread in New Testament studies: All the promises to the Jewish people are fulfilled exclusively in Israel’s representative, the Messiah Jesus, the quintessential Jew. As N. T. Wright states, “Paul explicitly and consciously transfers blessings from Israel according to the flesh to the Messiah, and thence to the church . . . Gal. 2–4 argues precisely that the worldwide believing church is the true family of Abraham, and that those who remain as ‘Israel according to the flesh’ are in fact the theological descendants of Hagar and Ishmael, with no title to the promises.” This outlook has been termed “economic supersessionism.”