Tikkun Magazine, November/December 2007 How Jewish was Jesus? By
Tony Campolo THERE IS A CONSENSUS AMONG BIBLICAL SCHOLARS that
Jesus and the New Testament can only be understood in the
context of the ancient Jewish sociocultural system. However,
Christian theologies over the centuries have largely developed
in synthesis with Greek philosophy. This synthesis has led to
many distortions of the teachings of Jesus and the practices of
the Church. One of the most important consequences of adopting
Greek categories of thought has been the influence Greek
thinking has had on the ways Christians have developed their
understanding of human nature. The Greeks thought of human
beings as consisting of two distinct parts: body and soul. For
instance, the neo-Platonists of the Hellenistic culture taught
that prior to birth each of us was a pure essence, existing in a
transcendent spirit world. Then, according to those ancient
philosophers, something tragic happened. We were born! Each of
us at birth was thrust into human